For the past three months I did a test to see whether:
- Kindle Select Free Promotions were still a viable marketing tool and
- Whether $0.99 or $2.99 was a better selling price.
The results surprised even me.
PROBLEM
I have two non-fiction how-to books that were published 2011/2012 respectively. Even with updates sales started to lag. My ranking fell from a healthy 60,000 to around 300,000. I also lost my top 100 rankings in my chosen categories. So, essentially, I wasn’t visible on at least two of Amazon’s lists. (I still came up in the top ten for my chosen keywords and Amazon keyword searches.)
99¢ or $2.99 or…
When sales lag in summer, as they always do for my how-to books, I decided to test the 99¢ waters. For the average self-publishing author, offering their books for less should garner more sales, right?
Well, not necessarily.
The Plan
Two of my books were in the final stages of updates. So while the finishing touches were being completed, I decided to do a 90-day test.
- Book #1 – 230 pages; priced $6.99
- Book #2 – 153 pages; priced $4.99
Strategy
- Reduce the price of both books to 99¢
- Promote “for a limited time” in the Description
- Promote on Twitter
- track results
Results
Sales trickled in without any major improvement. So I decided to combine the 99¢ price with alternating Kindle Select free days.
Kindle Select
Basically, the Kindle Select program allows you to place your book up for “free” every 90 days (so long as your book remains exclusive to Amazon.)
I first tried Kindle Select for my books when they released in 2011, 2012 (respectively). The free downloads were several thousand. While I didn’t relish giving away my book, it did give a major boost in the rankings, so my sales jumped after each promotion.
Now, however, with a nearly saturated market of books, I wondered if Kindle Select was still effective.
The Plan
My goal is to see if Kindle Select would still give my books a boost in the paid rankings, improve my category ranking and thus garner more sales.
Strategy 1
- 2 Books
- 90 days
- Total 10 free days
- alternate days and weeks
- track results
I chose weeks one and three for Book #1; weeks two and four for Book #2. A different day of the week was selected to determine which had the highest download.
To promote the “free days” I announced it on Twitter only, about 2-3 times on the given day.
I tracked the downloads hourly (or as often as possible)
Results
The free downloads of 2013 averaged far less than I had the previous year.
Average Downloads / Day
- Book #1 (2012) 1238 downloads; (2013) 77 downloads
- Book #2 (2012) 794 download; (2013) 78 downloads
Categories / Overall ranking
This was a complete surprise. After the first free promotion, there was a fairly good jump in the overall rankings, and a slightly higher jump in category rankings.
During the free promotion, I knew my “rankings” would show a major improvement. But you need to remember that they are showing rankings for “free listings”.
My goal was to improve my “paid” ranking.
Free
I did reach a top #1 spot for free books in my categories. And I achieved a top free ranking of 348 and 1093 respectively.
- Book #1 — #1, #5 category ranking; 348 overall
- Book #2 — #2, #3 category ranking; 1092 overall
Paid Rankings
After the promotion, the overall “paid” ranking had improved dramatically as did the category ranking. It takes about a day after a free promotion has ended for paid ranking to display.
- Book #1 (before) 234,538; (after) 56,000
- Book #2 (before) 345,287; (after) 78,344
After the sale
After each promotion, the books reset to their 99¢ price. Although the rankings had improved, sales improved only modestly, and the rankings started to revert to their previous standings.
However, After repeating this strategy for 90 days, alternating free days and books I discovered my rankings started to gain ground.
There were far less dramatic swings (see figures below) in the rankings from day to day and week to week. And my hold on category rankings was improving. Yet, sales were still lack-luster at the 99¢ price point.
Book #1 (Author Central)
Kindle Select / Rankings Case Study Book 1
Book 2 (Author Central)
Kindle Select / Rankings Case Study Book 2
Pricing Revisited
The final stage of the test was to re-increase the price of Book #1 to $2.99. One would imagine increasing a price would have detrimental effects, but surprisingly it had the opposite result.
Sales improved 200%.
Conclusion
I discovered that people are willing to pay for quality books. When my book was priced in the 99¢ range, sales were pitiful. Granted at the higher price of $2.99, sales are not as robust as they once were, but they have improved 200%.
There are thousands of free books on the market. The mistake is thinking you need to compete with the price point. In truth, you are only competing with yourself. Your focus should be on creating a quality product and building a loyal target audience.
Final Results
- Improved over ranking
- Improved category rankings
- Improved sales
- Price your book according to quality and length. 99¢ means short, small or cheap.
- Kindle Select can still improve rankings but not to the extent it used to.
Free days are good if your book is nearly life-support. It can give you a quick boost, but it won’t last. The only guarantee of more sales is keep writing.
Will I use the free promotions again? Probably only on newly published books.
Case Study 2: What’s next?
Kindle Select in a 5-day blast: My latest book Kindle MICRO Solutions: Creating eBook Tables using HTML & CSS (Primer), is a small Kindle MICRO Solutions release. I plan to put it up for free for 5 days. No alternating days or weeks. Just one 5-day blast and then done.
Kindle Countdown Deal: It’s part of the Kindle Select program and looks very promising. I love the “call to action” – slowly increasing the book price from 99¢ to the list price over hours or days (your choice). The catch is the book must be priced at least $2.99. I will be testing this on Book#1 as well as my Kindle Solutions books as they are released.
I’ll keep you posted on these results.
