Amazon, Author Tools & Resources, Book Marketing & PR, eBook Publishing, Self Publishing Your Book

How a Free Promotion via KDP Select Can Produce BIG Results. (With Numbers!)

Thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing’s ‘Select’ program, authors can promote their book more affordably through a program that allows them to give away their book for free for five days out of every 90.

This bodes well for authors because it can potentially broaden their reach, help them garner reviews, and improve their Amazon ranking too.

~ Learn more about why KDP Select might be an excellent option for self-published authors on the 30 Days blog post I posted a while back. I also include the downsides of this service, so be sure to read that part, too: /should-you-enroll-your-book-in-kdp-select-the-basics/ ~

Here’s an example of one author who engaged in a two-day free promotion through KDP that worked fantastically. Kathy Lynn Harris, author of Blue Straggler, saw tremendous results with this program– 20,246 downloads during her two-day free-days!

Check it out:

Blue Straggler’s Rankings Day Before Two-Day promotion

#1 in Kindle Store – ebooks – Fiction – Comic fiction

#18 in Kindle – ebooks – humor

#145,545 in Amazon overall

Free Promotion Day One by 8 am MT

Day One, by Noon

Day Two, 8 am MT

Day Two, 11 pm MT

#6 in Top 100 Free

#1 in Kindle Store – ebooks – Fiction – Comic Fiction

#1 in Kindle Store – ebooks – Humor

#8 in Books – Humor & Entertainment

Total: 20,246 downloads over two-days.

Of course the important thing is that it didn’t end there. The sales continued even after the promotion was over. Since Amazon counts these free downloads as sales [Edit Sep. 2012: Amazon is constantly tweaking their algorithm and this may well not be the case anymore], her book stayed high in the rankings which helped it to sell further…

  • For an entire month later, Blue Straggler sat between the #500 – #6000 ranking (remember that a low rank on Amazon is good) compared to before KDP Select where she hovered between #30,000 – #150,000.

Kathy saw tremendous results from this free program. Some have suggested that KDP is losing its shine, but in my opinion it’s still offering a big boost in sales for at least a couple of weeks post-promotion, and that might be just the boost your book needs right now if it’s not getting the exposure you want. These results won’t last forever – get on it while it’s still a good option!