As I wrote in my two previous articles (Amazon KDP Select free promotion - Day 1, and Amazon KDP Select free promotion - Day 2), I've been participating in the Amazon KDP Select free ebook promotion program for the last two days to see how that would affect sales of my new ebook, How I Sold My Business: A Personal Diary.
I'm writing this entry on the day after my two day "free" promotion, and things have basically gone back to where they were before. While my ebook bounced between #1 and #3 in the Small Business category of the Free Kindle ebook store for more than 24 hours, today there is no indication of that on my product page, and it just shows the book is about #250,000 in overall sales.
As an author/publisher, that's disappointing. I was hoping my product page might say something like, "#1 in the Small Business free ebook category for 24 hours", or "Top 20 for two days", but nope, there's no mention of it at all.
Next steps
As I wrote yesterday, other than hiring a PR person, I'm not sure where to go from here. I know a lot of people downloaded my free ebook, and hopefully they'll like it, and give it positive reviews. That seems to be the hope and promise of the KDP Select free book promotion program.
I will keep some Google AdWords campaigns running, but with the book priced at only $4.99, that's a tough proposition. If I let AdWords run wild, ads can easily cost $2 per click, so unless everyone who clicks an ad also buys the book, there's not much profit in that. I'm currently trying to take a much more targeted approach, and put a maximum of $1.25/click on the current campaign.
I may also start an ad campaign on the Microsoft/Yahoo ad network. I have free credits over there from buying some domains, maybe $50-100, so it's certainly worth exploring that.
Next follow up
I'll probably follow up on this process again next weekend. I hope there will be a few reviews of my book by the end of the weekend, but of course that's out of my control. (One person I know told me he thinks 80% of the reviews on Amazon have been "bought", but I won't go that route.)
books by alvin
 |
 |
 |
 |