Running a free eBook promotion with Amazon.
You can run either a Free Book Promotion or a Kindle Countdown Deal every 90 days for eBooks and only while you’re enrolled with Amazon KDP Select. So you can’t run a Free Book Promotion AND Countdown deal within the same 90 days (kind of a bummer).
I waited until my eBook and paperback pages were linked prior to running the Free Book Promotion. I wanted to make sure that anyone who came to the page and didn’t want or was unable to download the eBook would also be aware that the paperback was available for purchase.
I opted to run one Free Book Promotion for 5 days, although you can split that 5 days among the 90 days however you choose. My thought was that anyone who shared the deal might do so a day or two later and I wanted to try and allow as many people to see the free promotion and take advantage of it as possible.
The Free Book Promotion was the first time I put myself out there as an author. Up until then I hadn’t really talked about my book much with anyone outside my immediate circle. I shared my book on Facebook with friends and family who were extremely supportive.
Although I had created an account on Twitter this was also the first time I really put myself out there on that platform as well. I do wonder if having a larger Twitter following would have increased how successful the promotion would have been, but in the end it did gain me Twitter followers, even if not a lot of downloads.
Setting one up
This promotion is available once you’ve set up your eBook and it’s live. On your Bookshelf in kdp.amazon.com there is an option to “Promote and Advertise” next to your eBook. From there select the “Free Book Promotion”, enter the date range you want to run your promotion and let your friends, family and fans know about it!
Was it successful?
The campaign was successful in moving my book ranking quickly on Amazon in the free book section. The highest I saw it reach was 83 in free books within Children’s Fantasy, which was pretty darn exciting for my first book!
I opted to do this as my first real means of marketing in the hopes that I could quickly get a good chunk of reviews before I pushed my book out further. So in that respect, this was not successful for me. Unfortunately I only got a handful of reviews between Amazon and GoodReads, surprisingly from people I didn’t even expect to be interested in the book. I read that there’s a disappointingly low proportion of readers who will leave you a review, which is definitely what I saw as well.
While the majority of downloads were no doubt curious friends and family, I had a huge increase in activity during that period. So in that sense, I would consider it a success in that it helped quickly gain exposure for my book and hopefully some fans.
Would I do it again?
If I choose to stay enrolled in Amazon KDP Select, absolutely. It’s a good way to raise awareness of your book, and best of all it doesn’t cost you anything - which is a huge win in and of itself.