Amazon announced a new promotion tool this past week, the Kindle Countdown Deals. Authors enrolled in KDP Select may be able to take advantage of this new program. It boils down to a time-driven discount promotion. Here are the basics of the new Kindle Countdown Deals.
- You earn your base royalty on the discounted book. In other words, if your original royalty is 70% on the retail pricing, you maintain the same royalty percentage during the temporary discount.
- Amazon launched a dedicated website at www.amazon.com/kindlecountdowndeals for readers to browse deals.
- You can monitor performance in real time. Amazon added another line to your “Reports” menu.
- Your book’s detail page will run a counter announcing the promotion and the time remaining to grab the deal.
You must meet a few conditions in order to enroll your book. Look for the specifics at https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2MJTCAYTCBNW2. The major knockout punches are:
- Regular prices must fall between $2.99 and $24.99
- You must have been enrolled in KDP Select for 30 days
- Your book price must NOT have changed for 30 days or more
It’s simple to enroll, although, when I initially tried to enroll my b
ook, the site wasn’t working. It appears to be functioning now. You can go to your KDP Dashboard to start the process. Click the new “Manage Benefits” link to create your promotion.
Choose the appropriate “Kindle Discount Deals” button and continue on to the set up page.
Once you have your dates set, you can choose the length of each pricing level and the number of pricing increments starting at 99¢, leading back up to your original price. 
Click “Add Promotion” and you’re all set. I’ve set up The Card to run with this promotion to test how it works. It will launch on November 12th and run for six days. For some unknown reason, the system would not let me launch right away, as the FAQ’s indicate I should be able to do.
In my opinion, anything new that Amazon wants to try that may bring additional attention to author’s books is a good thing. The free book promotion was a goldmine in its infancy and as we know, it has lost some of its luster. I’m hopeful that this program may give the same kind of bump that we experienced with the introduction of KDP Select’s free promotions.
According to the Amazon website, some books will be featured on the Kindle Countdown page, which has a range of automated merchandising campaigns to help readers find deals based on attributes including genre, most popular, recommendations and more. Currently, this is available only with Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Are you going to enroll your book in this new promotion? If so we would love to hear how it worked for you. I’ll be sure to report back with results on my title that is enrolled for later this month.
Thanks, Jim. So in order to use this I need to be in KDP select. And take my book down from Smashwords for the duration. It looks enticing, but I wonder if it is worth it?
Thanks for the info, Jim. I need to set this up for one or more of my books.
I have one of my books enrolled in the Countdown Deals, but when I go to that fourth Promotions line, I get “No Promotions Found.” The countdown has started for the book, and they say that link will be updated periodically, but it’s been well over twelve hours. Just keep checking, I guess.
I’m using free days, but count me in on this deal.
Thanks for this explanation Jim. I received an email from Amazon about this but didn’t really understand what was so ‘new’ about it. I might give it a try now.
I waited too long to jump into the KDP, it had lost its effectiveness by the time I did. The resulting downside of taking my book off the other distributor sites is still reverberating I feel. So I’m not sure if I will but, as they say, ‘He who hesitates is lost.’ But thanks for that Jim.
I’ve got Ulterior Motives on a countdown for seven days starting today. It was already in KDP select and I hadn’t used my free days (apparently you can’t use both in any one 90 day period) so I thought I might as well give it a go. As of tonight it looks like there are already over 3000 books signed up for the promotion – and judging from the books which come up on the initial promotion page it seems like Amazon has picked the books with the most reviews (most seem to have over 100) which does not bode well for mine getting much of a push on the site, especially as it is in the mystery/suspense category, but as they say, if you never try….
Ok, I just set up a promo for Nov 20-27. Looks interesting, might as well take it for a spin.
I’ve been reading the FAQs and wondering whether to have a go with this. I missed out on the Free days when they were doing well but might try the discount price. It can’t hurt, can it? It does say on the blurb for authors that it’s up to us to promote the fact our book/s are discounted for a set time.
Check you enrollment data. When does your current Select enrollment end? You might want to use the rest of it to do some Freebie campaigns, then do the discounts next time around.
Thanks for the informative article!
Yvonne, that problem with SmashWords has a lot to do with why Select exists.
In my talks and pdf I stress that people who are going to do Select, to do so at once, not go on other eTailers until you’ve exhausted what you can do with free books and that whole “amazon ecosystem” based on Select.
But this raises the ante… promotions like this could be useful indefinitely, throughout the life of your book. So when you ever un-enroll? It’s a very powerful tool for amazon monopoly. I can kind of see a strategy based on using the first 3 or 6 months for freebies to build the book up, then start using discounts…and maybe a some point getting off it and going on Premium, but if it’s working out for you…. getting a lot of sales every time you do a discount…. there would be little motivation to. Which is just what they want.
Thanks, Lin. That makes sense.
Hi Jim,
I ran a Countdown deal on my book and the results were spectacular here in the UK (#1 in Metaphysical and Visionary Fiction. and #2 in Fantasy/Fairy Tales), however, sales in the US were poor.
I was surprised. The one and only time I did a free giveaway, the US take-up was 400% higher than the British response.
I looked on my Amazon.com product page and was horrified that the page was constantly reloading and not settling down – customers could just about buy a copy if they aimed at the one click option, then hit it as fast as they could, but those who like to know something about a book prior to buying it were unable to read reviews or product details.
I alerted Amazon, but they claimed not to be able to replicate the problem, I continued writing to them and losing sales, but nothing was done. The product page only settled and became fully readable when the promotion ended. Many emails later they have made this verdict:
‘We’re sorry we haven’t been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. We will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.’.
I do not find this response at all helpful.
I understand the Countdown Deal is a new selling tool, but it should have been fully tested to be fit for purpose.
.
It’s good to hear Countdown has worked well for some people. I’m giving it a “go” on 29 November with “Drums”, a historical romance and part of my Southern Seas Series.
I have no particular expectation of the scheme other than the hope it might raise the profile of my books.
Gwen
Thanks.