Daniella Brodsky

Author of The Patrons

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Complete KDP Select Free Days Book Launch Strategy for Self-Publishers

If you’re going to launch your self-published book with Kindle KDP Select, make the most of it by running a promo with the kindle KDP Select free days you’re given each enrolment cycle. The self-pub community (including yours truly), is starting to think you might be better off not giving amazon exclusive digital publishing for a 90 day period (the requirement to use these promotion tools by entering into KDP Select—if not right now, then certainly in the near future—going “wide” with your release, across Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Google Play (more on this in future post). But if you’re going exclusive to Kindle, which let’s face it, many of us still are, your initial release is your chance to get extra visibility by hitting the “Hot New Releases,” which you’ll get to stay in for 30 days, until those launch sales numbers cycle out of your ranking. This means more views, which means the opportunity for more sales.

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KDP Select Free Days Results in Great Ranking on “Hot New Releases.”

I kept a log of my every move for the launch of my first non-traditionally published novel, THE PATRONS, which I launched in the US and UK in June, and in Australia (where I live), which I have posted and considered below. But first, some additional strategies based on my experience.

  1. Launch Globally. Don’t make the mistake I made in splitting launch areas. First I thought this would be a good way to spread the love in terms of sales and regular growth, rather than one quick spike (which all the current knowledge says amazon’s algorithm prefers), but this was a mistake. My Australia launch was after the US/UK one, and people here wanted to buy it when they saw all my facebook posts and tweets. I was missing out on sales opportunities. When my friend suggested this to me, I immediately saw the error of my ways and softly, quietly made the book available for a lower price to Australians in the know, so they could buy early and spread the word. Next time I’ll do a global launch, and I’m already thinking of fun ways I can connect different international readers in the excitement.
  2. Rack up reviews. Get a street team to beta-read your book early, for free, in exchange for honest reviews. Do not ask your friends or family to do this; you want genuine reviews from the right kind of readers, who will be excited and spread the word—amazon’s been rejecting reviews from your personal friends and family lately anyway. I was pretty lucky in that I’ve had a lot of organic reviews from my past books (although nothing like the hundreds that seem to be required now), and this seemed to allow me to get the new book posted on some of the marketing sites that have requirements on review numbers, allowing me to bend the rules a bit in the face of clear experience. So don’t be afraid to email these people directly with your questions; we all have unique situations, and you just never know. Star ratings requirements (some have four star requirements) are pretty popular on the more powerful book mover marketing sites, and I can tell you from a recent free promo for my book, Princess of Park Avenue, I think these four star or higher ratings are becoming more important than ever, especially if you want to score a bookbub…Try running a giveaway to your list on instafreebie, where they also give the option of promoting on social media and on their own pages–apparently matching your efforts. Also give bookrazor a try–they’ll email you lists of contacts who are a good match to review your book with email addresses; they comb through amazon reviews to find good candidates based on similar book titles you provide. Another option is Book Review 22, which I heard about on the Sell More Books Show (which is my personal favorite industry podcast), and intend to try and report on.
  3. Make your offline review online. Here’s a major error I made: I ordered a bunch of my print books through createspace so I could sell them at a discount via preorder to my launch party guests, for signature on the night (more about that party here and here). While this raised a decent amount of money to help with party expenses, it cost me a major number of reviews because lots of people at the launch party would have posted reviews but amazon wouldn’t let them (I’ve been hearing mixed reasons of why this may be, i.e., possibly because they are overseas in Australia, rather than in the US, or because they may have never purchased from amazon before; if it was the latter, which seems most likely, the problem would solve itself). This would probably also have raised my ranking and made even more of my “Hot New Releases” status. While the real world cache of paper books, the local media coverage, and the idea of the books not ‘only being available on amazon’ (purely an ego issue) were motivators for me, I see now I should have worked around this. I welcome any feedback on experience here.
  4. Place links to mailing list sign-up and other books at the back of your book. I heard on Joanna Penn’s Podcast that Draft2Digital has a service that can update these pages on all of your books at once, which sounds like a dream to me; I may look into it for my next release. I had my other books listed at the back and even a website homepage link, but after hearing how much repeat business writers get this way, and most importantly, after using a Kindle myself, I realize how powerful these specific sign-up landing page and amazon book page links are. Best practice these days is to let readers know at the front of your book that they’ll be a chance to sign up for a free book at the back of the book, place a link so they can click right there to sign up for your mailing list. If you want to know how to promote your book, this is the best place to start, because your mailing list is your strongest book marketing tool. Hear more about this from Mark Dawson on his Self Publishing Formula.
  5. Segment and properly target your audience. THE PATRONS was quite different than my other books; while it probably would have been the right choice to target readers of my women’s fiction title, VIVIAN RISING, the true chick lit fans from DIARY OF A WORKING GIRL and PRINCESS OF PARK AVENUE would be the wrong audience for such a racy, literary title as THE PATRONS. And a negative review from a chick lit reviewer fan proved that.

In the short term, the effort paid off: After my kdp select free days, The Patrons did make “Hot New Releases,” which gave it optimum exposure for 30 days, and it hit bestseller status in all its categories. But the fizzle in sales and ranking after that was pretty quick. How to make the most of hitting those lists the next time around? I’m certainly determined to find out.

In the meanwhile, here’s how the promo went:

RESULTS OF KDP SELECT FREE DAYS PATRONS 26 JUN (USA DATES)

5pm #5,904 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

10:30pm #6,282 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

27 JUNE 12:20 am #5,895 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

4pm #3,837 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

5pm WOW! #919 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

8pm HOLY MOLY! #317 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

Later-ish pm OMG!!!!!! #160 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

Mon 28 12pm #133 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

AND THE VERY LAST BEFORE I PULLED IT OFF: #75 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

 

Anyone would agree that my kdp select free days scored a pretty good result. Next time I’m going to work out how to make that “stickier.” My guess is I lost a pretty good opportunity to have some regular revenue from that title. Should I have gone with an FB ad there? Not sure what would have done the trick; will certainly be putting that out there for some expert insight…But as it stands, here’s how it went after THE PATRONS returned to kindle paid listings:

 

BACK ONTO KINDLE PAID LISTING 2:30am

FRIGHTENING, BUT LATER REBOUNDED #14,272 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

#3,103 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

29 at 3 #2,516 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

5:45 #2,339 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

8pm #2,131 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

4am #2,495 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

And down it went from there. Today I’m at

#645,985 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

…there are ups and downs up to 120K-ish, but my best month was that first one, with about $600USD take from that title; nowhere near there since. Hmmmm. Thoughts? Can’t help but think I was soooooo close with that start…Hence, my ongoing blog for this month: Action One New Marketing Strategy Per Day for 30 Days. Want to read more about KDP Select promotions? Click here for my 99cent promo days in kindle kdp select promoted on bookbub.

 

 

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Comments

  1. John says

    In helping with point 2, I’ve launched https://www.paperbackreviewer.com to automate the review gathering process. You can even specify a launch date by which all reviews have to be done and posted on Amazon and Goodreads. Choose only the reviewers you think are a good fit, unlike what I’ve experienced at Goodreads and LibraryThing. Hope it helps.
    John

    Reply

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