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Kindle Countdown Fail
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Iffix
(last edited Jun 22, 2015 09:45PM)
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Jun 22, 2015 09:44PM
I have been running a countdown on my e-book Impulse since yesterday. (It's a one week sale.) I told folks on Twitter, on Goodreads, on my own personal website, on Facebook. Even though my prices are significantly reduced (down to $.99), I haven't seen any sales from the initiative. Did I do something wrong? Has anyone else seen their Kindle Countdown Deal fail terribly?
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My kindle countdown didn't do anything for me. :\
My free giveaway didn't do much for me either.
Okay, so at least I know I'm not alone. That's comforting. I shall press on.
I've been more successful with free giveaways than countdowns.
Mod
We've had much better luck with countdowns than free giveaways, but our book was out a long time before countdown sales were available and had already gained some traction. Now we use countdowns to encourage people to buy the whole series, and that works pretty well. But for my co-author's fantasy novel, we've seen little response to countdowns -- often none. It rarely sells anyway, and countdowns don't seem to help that. A free promo might have on one occasion -- we did see a small uptick afterwards, which seemed related at the time, but in hindsight, I'm not so sure.
My takeaway on countdowns is that if a book is not getting much interest, dropping the price will not generate interest. If there is interest -- which implies visibility -- people who've been on the fence or have some mild degree of interest might take a shot for $0.99. But there has to be interest first.
Iffix wrote: "I have been running a countdown on my e-book Impulse since yesterday. (It's a one week sale.) I told folks on Twitter, on Goodreads, on my own personal website, on Facebook. Even though my prices a..."Hi,
I had a minor increase of sales on amazon.com (but hardly anything worth mentioning), but on amazon.co.uk I had absolutely no sales.
I've run several Countdowns over the past couple of years. You have to advertise them on good sites like Bookbub, ENT, KB&T, etc. Otherwise, they don't do much at all, in my experience. There are thousands of Countdowns running each day, so you get lost in the crowd unless you promote them heavily.
Owen wrote: "We've had much better luck with countdowns than free giveaways, but our book was out a long time before countdown sales were available and had already gained some traction. Now we use countdowns to..."Agreeing with Owen. I do well when I do a countdown on the series books, best if I do a free day on the first book and follow that up with a countdown on the next two in the coming week. When I put my standalone books on countdown, I only got interest if the sale was paired with another of my books.
Over the past weekend I did a half-price sale on Smashwords for one of my novels and thanks primarily to Twitter it got over 200 hits. However, not one sale. I think most people, especially on Twitter and Smashwords, want free, not half- or reduced-price sales.
Mod
Owen wrote: "We've had much better luck with countdowns than free giveaways, but our book was out a long time before countdown sales were available and had already gained some traction. Now we use countdowns to..."I always see a few sales in the week or two after a free promo. Not always the related book either.
Mod
Same here. Horror story goes out free, I sell some humor. Humor story free, I sell general fiction. Weird.
Countdown for me was extremely disappointing. I am back this block to split, 1 day giveaways.
