I’ve only just discovered, too late, that when you run a Kindle Countdown deal it either happens at Amazon.com or Amazon.UK, and not all regions at the same time. So while this time I’ve managed to put different books on Countdowns for the different regions, I’ll know better for next time.
The thing to do if you want your deal to be available to both regions is to set up two separate promotions for the same book on the same dates – one for UK and another for the USA. It’s a bit trickier setting a low price for the other regions, so you’d probably be better off doing an extra promotion where you manually set prices to ninety nine cents for your promotional period. The only problem with that is that you won’t get the additional visibility of having your Countdown books listed on Amazon’s deals page. People do actually go there to surf for bargains, and those sales are the cherries on the top of your promotion.
If you, like I have just mistakenly done, zoom along and set up your deal only to realise on the day, then you’re going to have to state in any advertising that you do which region the deal is for, or you could end up with angry potential readers clicking on your links to find that there is no discount for the book in their country. It’s not the end of the world, but definitely not a good way to go about things, especially if you’re running ads on any of the book tweeting and newsletter services.
The same applies to free books. I’ve often seen books advertised for free only to see that they’re not free for me. Always have a look when you’re doing a free book promotion to see where it’s going to be free. If you have it set to limited regions you’re definitely going to lose out on potential readers.
Even if your book is not enrolled in KDP Select, it’s a good idea to have pricing promotions now and then. It’s not a good idea to leave your books languishing on the virtual shelf with only the occasional promotional tweet. You get new followers on your various online sites all the time, and not everyone looks at all the widgets in your sidebar. They could be following you because of a funny or gorgeous tweet or blog post, and have no clue about your books, even though they like your articles. At least twice a year give your books a little party. Drop the prices and share the news all over the place. You’re sure to find at least a couple of new readers.
Having said that, I’m not suggesting that you join the “Oy buy my book!” brigade. Those guys who solely blast out their book links several times a day, every day, to the same audience. If you post only your book links this way your followers will quickly get either bored or irritated and stop looking, so when you do finally have something interesting to share there will be nobody who sees it. Occasionally though, of course you must promote your book. Promotion is part of your job as an Indie, so share your work proudly now and then. There is no shame at all in earning cash for your writing, and nothing wrong with marketing without being spammy.
