My Experience of Promoting Books on KDP

[V]

I have tried to promote my Books on KDP and the sale increased from 2 Copies for the first 2 years to 11 Copies of Print a few download- paid. But the free down load is massive. I don't know if I am losing my buyers this way.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...

[John]

I've promoted about five of my books on KDP Select and I've come to the conclusion that it's cost me buyers. In every case, after the 90 day free period my sales dropped, and never got back to where they were before I put the ebooks in the KDP program. It might work better for well-known authors, but not for most average authors.

John

[Paul]

In my experience it works best for books in a series. Use KDP Select to promote the first one in the series and sales lost for that book are more than made up by a boost in sales of all the others.

You also have to ensure that the book you're promoting with Select is good enough to ensure that a good proportion of readers make the transition to the second one. Of course some people (almost) never buy kindle books and just read the many free ones out there, but I find a well targeted and timed KDP Select promotion can increase my overall book sales 3 to 4 times normal for a couple of months.

[R.P.]

HI All, I've been a huge fan of this Amazon deal for indie authors from its inception--until now. Yes! my free days gave me follow up sales all through 2012, but then in Feb and March, I've been seeing what many authors have been telling me--follow up sales are slipping! Yikes!

So I got on my thinking cap, decided on two things:
I'd keep the KDP program because Amazon pays nicely for the borrows,but I would no longer be giving away e-books.

Then, Eureka! I had an epiphany: what if Amazon offered Indie authors the choice of free or $.99 or $1.99? It would mean that authors could have a scheduled date in which their book would be discounted and then go back to regular price? Authors would make some money on their books and, Amazon would too!

Like this idea? Do what I did and tell Amazon you'd like to see more than FREE for an option at KDP Select.

[Rinelle]

I thought you could already do this? Maybe it's not an automatic thing though? But you can change your price, then change it back.

I did a free promotion last week, and definitely still saw an increase in sales. Not a huge one, but better than the no sales I was seeing before. I wrote about it on my blog.

[Ronald]

My free KDP promo was in March. As per KDP support site I sold 40 units this month with 38 sales in one day yet these sales are not reflected in my ranking. Anyone else with this issue?
asongofafrica.org

[Heather]

I've noted that each freebie I do nets less freebies--probably because everyone's got it by then. I've gotten a handful of reviews, all overall positive, but I haven't really dented the market.

Although Secret Admirer made it Top 100 Free in Romance by the end of its first freebie...I was so proud. ^_^

[Paul]

I assumed that freebie sales were either excluded from the rankings or scaled down so they did not get an unfair advantage over priced books.

I've always found the main advantage of the KDP select promotions was that by giving the first book (Voyage of the Elysian) in my series of Astronomicon novels away free, I can stimulate a few dozen sales of the second book in the series. That, in turn, leads to about 70-80% as many sales of book 3 and so on. Apart from increasing my readership it also gives the sales rank of books 2 onwards a decent boost.

Once I've completed the revamp of the first two books in my series, I'm going to run some more freebie promotions as part of my relaunch. Hopefully my improvements (mostly rewritten dialogue), re-editing and proper external (ie not me!) proofreading will bump by ratings up one star too.