Yesterday, my Kindle Countdown deal for My Secret Sister started in the UK and US.
A Kindle Countdown Deal (KCD) is essentially a sale for a set period of time, and counts down on the amazon screen.
To say that I’ve been hanging my hopes and hat on this would be an understatement. I pictured in my mind my book flying up the charts. In the past, I have generally done a lot better at £.99 than at £1.99 so I was really looking forward to a big surge in rankings – maybe even becoming a bestseller in a fiction category!
What did I do to prepare?
The KCD was set to coincide with the blog tour I’d arranged through Rachel’s Random Resources. I was hoping that bloggers would drive traffic to the deal and increase conversions.
A bit late on (a week before it started), I realized that I probably ought to look at doing some other promos to drive traffic for the sale week.
Here’s what I looked at/ what I’ve done:
Bookbub – I signed up for another promo and was turned down.
Bookbub – I did set up another Bookbub ad with the sale copy and raised my bid slightly.
Kindlepreneur list of promo sites – I looked at Dave Chesson’s ‘Secret List’ of promo sites to find some paid ones to sign up for. I was too late for the Fussy Librarian, but I went with the following:
Ereader News Today
JustKindleBooks
Free Booksy
The total cost for these promos was circa $250. They were all happening on different days during the week, so I wanted to see which, if any, had an effect.
Facebook ad – another call with the Facebook ad representative! I set up a new promo ad for the US and UK. For some reason, it was a nightmare getting it set up, then I failed to turn it on properly the first day. It’s running now, and costing a bomb like Facebook ads do!
Social media – I set up my own tweets and Facebook posts.
Blog Tour – The bloggers have provided a great response so far, and I am thanking them personally and leaving comments on their sites.
AMS ads – These are now being run by a third party (more to come on this) but the brief is to try and drive sales as much as possible in the promo week.
What have I learned so far?
A few days before the deal went life, I started feeling a lot of anxiety. What if the book doesn’t fly up the charts? What if the KCD has no effect whatsoever?
As ever, the answer to these questions is that it is a learning experience. I am investing in my book to put it out there to the world. I make decisions, take action, and let go of the results.
Kindle Countdown Deals are not the same as Kindle Daily Deals. You know those emails you get from amazon with daily sales of Kindle books? I get one every day. Well, I discovered that Kindle Daily Deals are something completely separate from KCDs. A Kindle Countdown Deal is just a sale that I set. Amazon is not going to separately promote the book or the deal.
This was disappointing news. When I did a search for Kindle Countdown Deals, I expected to see my book. Instead, I saw that there were 4,000 plus other KCDs running at the same time – anyone can set up their own KCD.
Amazon does not give you any preferential treatment for your KCD. Like I said, my deal is one of thousands.
I did see a small increase in sales. Day one of the promo was my highest sales day so far (51 copies sold). But because I am marketing through different channels, I can’t say for sure which one is driving the traffic.
What is the takeaway?
I have been working a lot on seeing promotion of My Secret Sister as part of the bigger picture of my career as an author and not be so set on the specific results. Though I do feel some disappointment on the performance of the deal so far, I am going to count this as a lesson learned.
And hey – I did sell more books. That’s a success! I’m going to look at it as such.
Kindle Countdown Deals are unlikely to make your book race up the charts. They are just a sale that you set, and lots of other people have deals on at the same time.
Amazon does not specially promote your Kindle Countdown Deal.
Try different channels to drive traffic to your deal. I’ll post again if I get any discernible results from what I tried.
My and my book’s ‘worth’ are not determined by my amazon ranking – every day I am still working on believing this!
It’s OK to feel disappointed. I will process this feeling and move on.
This is all part of a bigger, long-term strategy. Short term results are less important that long term beliefs, goals, and strategies.
I will celebrate little successes that happen along the way!