KDP Promotion February 2013

I ran a KDP promotion at the beginning of February for Chasing Innocence. This video is about what happened. It's my first Chasing Innocence promo video and although it may not show, the culmination of many hours practising video editing.

KDP Price Point

During the nine months since Chasing Innocence was published it has been priced as low as .99p and as high as £4.99 At the higher end I didn't sell anything for two weeks and lost my nerve. At £3.45 I sold two books in two weeks and lost my nerve again. On Amazon's 35% scheme and CI priced at .99p I sold quite a few books each day but made less than I did if I raised the price to £1.53, which qualifies me for Amazon's 70% profit scheme.

Promoting my book for free saw a huge number of downloads but I can't see that it resulted in a lot of reads. The yardstick is the feedback and interaction I get from a small percentage of readers. If I run free promotions this drops off despite the high number of downloads. The highest volume of feedback comes when the book is priced at .99p, possibly because the reader feels they really got value for money.

The only problem with the .99p price point is profit. I'm an Independent Publisher who prides himself in producing commercial quality product, which comes with a cost overhead. I need to make enough money from sales to bring the same quality to future books and I'm not going to do that with 30p profit from each sale.

In the last month Chasing Innocence has received quite a lot of publicity due to its Best Indie Thriller short-listing by the Kindle Book Review. Working with the remarkable Melissa Foster all the shortlisted books were wrapped up in a campaign and resulted in a lot of sales at the higher price point of £1.99/$2.99. This taught me something else. That a book will sell at a higher price as part of a campaign and that sales will drop off soon after. Right now I barely have enough time to write, let alone market Chasing Innocence. If I spent my time marketing I'd not have a sequel to deliver in 2013. Until I can free up some time I have to focus on creating a body of work and price CI at a level that appeals to the passing reader. I've tested various price points in trying to find a balance between .99p and no profit and the £1.99 people only pay if they've already decided they want it.

£1.53 seems to hit that mark, resulting in steady sales without marketing. Giving me the time to conjure book two. Unfortunately $2.99 is the lowest price I can set CI in the US under Amazon's 70% scheme. This means I don't sell so well there outside of promotions, despite all CI's awards being US based.

John Potter is the author of Chasing Innocence, a 3x award winning and bestselling Crime Thriller. UK US

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Pricing your Kindle book

Pricing digital books has been in the press a lot lately. Digital publishing is still an emerging platform and many are still figuring what a good price for a kindle book is. As ever, context is important. Let us take a quick look at the commercially successful Lee Child, who's books are now movies headlined by Tom Cruise. On Aug 30 this year Lee Child's latest book will be released. The Kindle version at launch will be £10.53 ($16.49), slightly less expensive than the Hardcover. The price of last year's The Affair is currently £6.83 ($10.80) on the Kindle and 2010's Worth Dying For is £4.49 ($7.10). The pricing of Lee Child's Kindle books keep pace with the most recent printed version. Each of his back catalogue are priced slightly cheaper than the paperback. Lee Child sells about two books every second of every day.

My one indie published book looks like it might be commercially produced but has nothing other than the cover, Amazon reviews and word of mouth to commend it. The reality is Kindle owners will pay seven bucks for their favourite commercial authors and thankfully, they will pay to try an indie author. They will not pay much though. I can't really say I blame them. I'm one of them. Quality is a big issue (and the topic for a future post).

On releasing Chasing Innocence I knew slightly more than NOTHING about selling Kindle books. I priced the Kindle version at £3.45 and it sold 21 copies that month. I knew every one of the people that bought it. Out of a desire for the book to be read over a desire to make money, I scheduled a two day Amazon Select promotion and suddenly it was on four thousand Kindle devices across the UK and US. During the promotion I'd researched prices for indie books and immediately after the promotion dropped the price to £1.53 ($2.99). I was surprised to see it purchased 800 times over the next month with sales dropping off over that time. If I dropped the price to 99p sales picked up. If I ran a Select promotion I had a spike in sales after the promotion and a slow drop-off. If I kept the price at £1.53 sales ticked-over at about five units a week. If I dropped the price to £1 then sales picked up to 10-30 units per week. If I set the price to £3.45 sales drop to one a week. I discovered people are more likely to leave a review of your book if they downloaded it for free or bought it for a buck or two.

As a reader I love a series character and good story telling over literary concepts, which usually results in me buying more of an author's books. If you want long term success as an indie author you will need more than one book, probably upwards of five. If you're building your writing brand from scratch expect to price your book a lot lower than commercial authors. By pricing low and working Amazon Select you will find an audience, you will spend less time marketing and have more time to write the best selling sequel.

The next indie publishing post is going to be about tagging and categorising your book on Amazon KDP. If you have stories or advice to share or questions on indie publishing you'd like answered, then I'd love to hear from you. 

So you want to publish a (Kindle) book? (2 of 2)

In eighteen months Amazon have turned the publishing industry on its head. You could not deny them any of their success. Ebooks had been around for a while. Publishers were puzzling the long term impact of digital books and charging more for the convenience of reading them while they deliberated. The Kindle for me was a natural evolution of technology and consumer needs. Today consumers expect a book to be on the Kindle, where a year ago they might just have been grateful it was. Buying Kindle books gives you an almost limitless personal library never to be lost, that can be accessed practically any where, any time. With Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) anyone can publish a book for free and it would seem many have. This post though, is not about that. It's NOT about making a Kindle book, designing a snazzy cover or making the content a thrilling, error free ride. This WHOLE site is about that. This post IS the second in two detailing what happens after you have published on Amazon. The first was about printed books, this is about Kindle books.

We should start with a repeat of the parameters.

1. I've started every single stage of this writing/publishing journey with my eyes wide open and little comprehension for what I was getting into
2. I REALLY didn't have any clue at any stage for what I was getting into
3. I'm constantly analysing, absolutely everything. I hope this analysis is at least interesting. I'm human and sometimes do get things wrong. Sometimes I get it horribly wrong

We start with Amazon. As an ebook publisher there are many places to pitch your stall. Mine for the time being is set in Amazon alone. Many people don't subscribe to the Amazon world view. They will buy from Barnes and Noble, or Kobo or from the Apple store. If I want to hit these stores then Smashwords will publish there for me. I know I'm missing out on a lot of potential sales by sticking with Amazon. Here is why I am staying with Amazon for the time being.

1. Smashwords do not accept pre-formatted ebooks. You give them a word doc and they will convert your book into the different formats. I'm obsessive about quality, I will always be reluctant to use a distributor if I don't have control over the quality. I don't know enough yet about how Smashwords works as a distributor and promoter, especially promotion. That said I'm probably going to add Chasing Innocence to Smashwords later in the year (2012)
2. Amazon Select is a program that requires selling your book on Amazon alone. In return for not selling anywhere else the Select program will promote your book as a free download for a maximum of five days every three months. The Select program allows you to potentially make more money by loaning your book to Amazon Prime customers, than you do in sales. This is unlikely for indie authors though as it's only available to US Prime customers
3. Time is the biggest reason for staying at Amazon. I have so little spare time outside of a job, commuting, a wife and writing. I need a sales mechanism that functions with little maintenance. That I trust. Amazon Select is all that right now. I'm busy writing two back-to-back books that will be published in 2013. Multiple good books multiply the chances of success. I only have one right now. I need to finish these other books to build success. I could push Chasing Innocence a lot harder right now, across multiple platforms, but it would take me away from writing. Success in 3-5 years time means I need to be writing now and not actively selling

Amazon Select has been a blast. The key is the five days of free promotions every ninety days. During these promotions Amazon will put your book in-front of their customers. This will also suck it into the Amazon trending and recommendation tools, as well as the charts. Here's a few things I've learnt along the way.

• Amazon is almost totally automated. It's a giant shiny machine that constantly analyses trends across continents and millions of buyers. It's not interactive. Learn how it works and adapt. It's not that it doesn't care, it's just too big to change direction quickly or go back for bits that fell off. Work with it but don't expect interaction. When you're emailing people at Amazon remember they're likely to be very busy and equally bound by the mechanics of the system, they just know a little more about the cogs and where they all are
• For the reasons above Amazon provide a lot of very informative documentation. If you're publishing a Kindle book you should probably read it. http://kdp.amazon.com
• The higher priced your book is immediately prior to any promotion the more often it will likely be downloaded during the promotion
• Never, ever start a promotion at the weekend. The Amazon databases are very busy and the promotion might not even start until the Monday. Each weekend promotion day will be counted against your available days even if the promotion doesn't start that day. Sending Amazon an indignant email isn't going to change anything
• Likewise, if your promotion is scheduled to end at the weekend, don't be surprised if your book keeps getting downloaded for free right up to the Monday
• Never, ever change the pricing or product detail of your Kindle book in the THREE days leading to the start of a promotion. Sometimes the changes can take a while and MAY hold up the start of the promotion
• You will NOT be paid for any books downloaded for free, even after your promotion ends
• Promotions start at midnight Central Standard Time (CST) which is seven hours behind British Summer Time (BST). If you're in the UK the promotion won't start until about seven AM and finish at the same time
• I've found sales and free downloads alike, dip daytime during the weekend. The busiest download day for me has been Thursday
• The KDP sales reporting tool is not always to the minute or hour accurate. If you're refreshing this every two minutes to check on sales you're wasting your time
• The book's sales rank on its product page IS an hourly updated and pretty accurate indication of sales. Remember there are different sales charts for the printed and kindle books, the ranking is displayed on the relevant product page. Here's my rough approximation of Kindle sales against ranking

• #100 - 150+ books sold in the last 24hrs
• #1000 - 20+ books in last 24hrs
• #3,000 - sold 5-8 books in last 24hrs
• #10,000 - sold two books in the last 24hrs
• #14,000 - sold one book in the last 24hrs
• #20,000 - not sold a book for 24+hrs
• #25,000 - not sold a book for 36+hrs

• You will very likely sell a higher proportion of books after a promotion ends. In the week following each of my two day promotions I sold a figure roughly equating to fifteen percent of the total books downloaded for free
• Promotion one: Chasing Innocence £3.45 - downloaded for free 3800 times. 550 copies sold
• Promotion two: Chasing Innocence £1.53 - downloaded for free 360 times. 60 copies sold
• Do not underestimate word of mouth. I have lost count the number of times I've heard: 'I'm reading Chasing Innocence because my friend...' These free downloads matter in getting the book out there
• Expect refunds after a promotion ends even if your book is only 99 pence or cents
• It is very easy to get hooked into your books position in the Kindle charts. You can find yourself doing bits here and there to promote it and get it up the charts. It is very painful to see your book slip down the charts. It is very easy to find yourself not writing the important next book. Probably the best thing you can do to promote your book is to write two or three more that are at least as good
• About half of one percent (0.5%) of people that buy your book will write a review without coercion
• About two percent of the people looking at your books product page will click the Helpful Yes/No button on reviews
• Twitter can be a good tool for discovering people that are reading your book. If you're using Twitter to find an audience you'll likely be disappointed. You will probably meet lots of writers that had the same idea
• Goodreads IS a great tool for discovering people reading your book 
• I have found people to be very helpful. I'm not sure I thought they wouldn't be, but it has been heart warming to discover just how helpful. If you are nice to people they are generally nice right back. They might even write you a review

Finally, I did a lot of research into ebook pricing before I published Chasing Innocence. Initially I priced the Kindle as I had tried to with the paperback, to be contemporary with authors like Lee Child and a little bit cheaper. £3.45 was the first price but I discovered this was too much for an unknown author with only one book. I've had some people say they won't buy a Kindle book from an unknown author for anything more than 99 pence. I hadn't even thought about that. The wave of indie author's publishing on the Kindle has driven down prices. If you're an established author then people will pay, otherwise you're in the mix vying for attention. I've tried all kinds of pricing, from £0.99 pence to £1 to my preferred price of £1.53, which is the minimum you can sell a book on Amazon's seventy percent plan. This plan is key for me as this last price means I make £1 on each sale. I've sold a thousand books so far and need to sell another two thousand by the end of the year if I'm to break even on the cost of copy/proof editors and graphic design. Which is vital because my mantra is to produce books at LEAST as good anything produced commercially. I found I sold EXACTLY the same number of books priced at £1.53 as I did at £0.99 pence. I'd like to think that's because most of my sales are recommendations.

I think that's about it. While I'm busy writing the next two books I'm going to stay with Amazon Select. It can be frustrating being tied into one sales platform when the sales start to dry-up, but for now a combination of time and only having one book makes it a necessity.

I hope this and the previous post have been informative.