Amazon Sales Rankings, Marketing With KDP Select Free Books, and Pricing to Drive Sales Ranking

I love to get free books on my Amazon Kindle. In fact, after years of not reading fiction anymore, I have discovered several new fiction authors I really like and spent a fair amount of money buying their other books. I once again read works of fiction!

This is the idea behind the KDP Select's free give away program. By entering your ebook into Amazon's KDP Select, which requires a 90 exclusivity period, you can give the Kindle edition of the book away for free for five days (Be sure to read all the details of how the KDP Select program works and then make your decision if you want to participate in this program).

The idea is to give away your book for free and have it climb into the Amazon Top 100 Free Kindle Books for that genre or category. This can translate into sales once the free trial period is over.

If an author has multiple books in a series, the idea is to give away the first book in the series to encourage new readers to try a new author. If the reader likes the free book, the reader can become a fan and buy the remainder of the books in the series.

There has been quite a bit written about this tactic, but that is the basics of the approach.

I have a non-fiction book that has gotten several 5-star reviews and every customer who has e-mailed me with a question has raved about how helpful the content has been to them. Yet the book persists in selling about one or two copies a month.

So, on March 5 through March 9 (2013), the Kindle version of this book is going to be free. My hope is to give away as many copies as possible. If it does not help sales of this particular title but gets customers to buy my other books, then it will be worth it. I have no idea how to collect and monitor specific data to see if this tactic will drive sales of my other books, but since the book is not selling anyway, this experiment can only help.

My other experiment is currently in progress. My best selling book for over a year was the first book listed when doing an Amazon search for its category. Within the last three months it had slowly moved down the rankings on the first page of search results, and with that decline, so has sales for the title.

The better the sales ranking on Amazon, the better the book will do in search results and the more sales the book will generate. The more sales the book generates, the better the sales ranking, etc. As one declines, so do the others.

The challenge is how do I work to restore the title's sales ranking and position in its category with a marketing budget of zero dollars?

I just could not bring myself to give the book away for free. So I lowered the price to 99 cents. I blogged about it on my website. Mentioned it in my newsletter and, horrors, tweeted about it on my Twitter account. The only cost was 20 minutes of my time.

Sales have jumped considerably in the first two days of the experiment which will last until February 28th. 

The sales ranking in the key search category has improved during those two days and the book has climbed from 12th on the page to 5th. The two other common search result queries have seen the book climb 2 and 4 spots on the pages results.

I certainly am not making much money on the sales this price has generated.

Then why did I do it?

This is not a new book. I have no money to invest in promoting it. So I have to work with what is available to me. The book has valuable content. It has good reviews. It has been edited, has a good cover and professionally designed interior and ebook conversion. It should be selling better but there are newer titles competing for the same customers.

Improving the sales ranking, search results position seems to be the only viable approach I have.

The lower price has certainly boosted sales in terms of units sold, sales ranking and improved position in search results.

When March 1st rolls around and the price goes back up, I hope the sales stay at the same level and generate the revenue this title used to generate.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Since most self-published authors have the same marketing and advertising budget I do, namely zero, it pays to experiment and see what works for your books. This is a business.

It Has Happened! An Amazon Kindle Best Seller! Even If Just for Two Days!

I am pretty excited and have to tell someone other than my wife and kids! Below you will see a screen shot proving one of my books actually, even if just for two days, climbed to Number 1 on an Amazon Best Seller List! Actually, The Game of Basketball, was Number 1 on two lists and Number 2 on a third.

If I could tell you just how this happened, I would gladly share the information. I for one would like to know how this happened so if it was anything other than luck, in other words, something I had done in terms of  marketing or promotions, I could replicate it for my other Kindle books.

My best guess is Amazon ran some kind of promotion on its own accord. The Kindle version of the book sells about 100 copies a month and the POD version sells about 35 or so a month. With basketball season entering the conference part of the schedule for college basketball and district play for high school basketball, Amazon might have sent out an e-mail listing basketball related books that sell well to customers who have purchased such books in the past. The book's past sales might have qualified it for inclusion in such a promotion.  

At any rate, it has sold over 700 Kindle downloads in the last 24 hours. Talk about motivating! I really want to sit down and finish the next project as soon as possible so it can be published as a Kindle book. 

Even more encouraging is the fact this book is self-published. I feel pretty confident this would not have happened 10 years ago. Amazon, POD and the Kindle have made a wonderful platform for authors who self-publish. 

I hope every author who visits this blog will feel encouraged by my success, albeit however temporary, fleeting or insignificant. If I can sell some books on Amazon, anyone can!

Marketing Kindle and POD Books When Releasing a New Title

Since introducing Kindle versions of two of my POD titles, I have been pleasantly surprised by two results, an increase in sales of the POD versions and the fact the Kindle versions have far outsold the print version. Late this month or early in April a Kindle version of my best selling POD title will make its debut on Amazon as well.

I have been thinking about what approach I should take in marketing the launch of my third Kindle title. I am concerned still about the possibility of Kindle sales hurting the print sales, especially since this is my best selling title. I hope the opposite is true and like the other two titles the sales numbers for the POD version improve AND the Kindle sales do well.

The first title I offered as a Kindle version I used my e-newsletter and an introductory price as an effort to spur sales initially. I also indicated in my newsletter that the introductory price would only be good until mid-January of this year and then there would be a price increase. I was stunned at the number of copies of the Kindle version I sold in December and early January. The numbers did drop after the price increase, but not dramatically. The title in question, The Game of Basketball, is ranked second if a search for coaching basketball is done. The first six weeks of sales drove the Amazon Sales Ranking up high enough that the long tail of Amazon did the rest. The decrease in sales numbers has not resulted in a loss of profit as the price increase combined with the minimal drop in total sales numbers means the Kindle version is earning more profit on the slightly lower volume.

The e-newsletter was a definite plus in marketing the release of The Game of Basketball and will be used for the next Kindle title. My price point will be higher for Game Strategy and Tactics for Basketball, my best selling title. I am also debating if I will use a lower initial price to drive early sales of the Kindle version as well.

One of the marketing issues for my target audience is how many of the potential readers of my books have Kindle reading devices? I worked to circumvent this issue by noting in each weekly issue of my in season e-newsletter that Kindle books could be read on a lap top and other electronic devices. I included a direct link to the page on the Amazon site where FREE software to read Kindle books could be downloaded to the device in question. If you have a means of providing this information with a link to potential customers I would encourage you to do so. Yes, you might sound like a shill for Amazon, but if it increases your Kindle sales, so be it.

I have a blog on my business website and I did use it to promote the Kindle titles but spent most of my promotional effort on the e-newsletter. 

There are several message boards where coaches visit to exchange information and often mention new books or DVDs they have obtained and offer reviews for other coaches to read. I am toying with the idea of giving away a few print copies to coaches to review with the request the review be honest, but mention that both a print and a Kindle version are available.

The only really different step I have taken in promoting my Kindle titles when compared to promoting my print titles is the effort to let potential readers know about the FREE Kindle software for devices other than the Kindle reader.

I would love for other authors to share any effective ideas they have successfully used to promote and drive sales numbers up for their Kindle titles.