Tag: free kindle books

When is FREE not free? Answer – when you do a Free book promotion.

Pete Barber
Pete Barber

Guest post
by Pete Barber

On May 17th, 2014 I offered my self-published technothriller, NanoStrike, free for five days on Amazon. My novel was downloaded 39,000 times. Perhaps my experience can help others.

Step one–I freshened up my novel, which I self-published in 2012 but never promoted. I retitled, recovered, rewrote, and reedited. If you’d like to know why, I recently wrote a blog post about this for Big Al’s Book & Pals.

I withdrew the old novel from all distribution channels except Amazon, waited two weeks, updated the title and cover on Amazon, then enrolled in KDP.

I was ready for my promotion. Continue reading “When is FREE not free? Answer – when you do a Free book promotion.”

The “Donut Hole” within Amazon’s KDP Select “Free” Periods

donuts
Mmmm… donuts.

Many authors might not have run into this donut hole while placing their book or books free in this program. I want to explain what it is along with how you can find where it occurs now or in the future, while providing a refresher on how to display the Select information.

First, a little background for those not familiar with Amazon’s KDP Select program. This program allows an author to have one or more of their books in this program provided they give KDP Select an exclusive distribution for 90 days. That means it can’t be available anywhere else in eBook form during that period. The benefit I’m going to be specifically talking about here is the ability to have that book, or books, free for five days within that 90 day window. Free means people can order them on Amazon free without any charge and without any royalty to the author.

I like donuts, probably a little too much. I could tell some stories, but I would only get myself into trouble. I know…I know…stay on track here.

As a relatively new author with six books, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and the “Select” program has been a true benefit to me. It has allowed my books to be published and discovered within the reader world. There are many debates over this program, but I love it. However, on a recurring basis, I run into the donut hole in the Amazon KDP Select 90-day free period. Continue reading “The “Donut Hole” within Amazon’s KDP Select “Free” Periods”

Preparing for Your KDP Select Free Days by Rex Jameson

[Editor Note: This step-by-step list is a great guide for promoting your free book through KDP Select. We used Rex’s methods to promote BAD BOOK at the end of June and had good success.]

Back when I first started using KDP Select, I used the Squidoo list by theinformationlady to promote my KDP Select promotion periods. I have had some pretty lousy results from Select recently, and I decided to revisit this and try to ferret out the proper way to do this. Here is my current process for promoting KDP Select titles:

Step 1: Make sure you have reviews BEFORE you settle on your promotion dates

Shortly after I published The Goblin Rebellion, I scheduled a KDP Select 2-day promotion over a month later and informed all the major sites without having any reviews for the book in place. I didn’t receive any emails back from ENT or POI, but I was in conversations with 2 book bloggers and had given away 50 copies at LibraryThing to try to garner some reviews. There were at least five people, counting the book bloggers, who told me they should be able to hit the promotion deadline.

None of them came through. Continue reading “Preparing for Your KDP Select Free Days by Rex Jameson”