Escape from Oblivion: What Could be the Single Most Effective, Least Time-Consuming Way to Promote Your Book?
What could be the single most effective, least
time-consuming way to promote a book today?
The short answer may be: Amazon’s Kindle Direct
Publishing Select program -- or KDP
Select, for short.
If you are already an electronic publisher
on Amazon, you can sign up for the KDP program for 90 days. You must agree to sell
ONLY through Amazon for that period, although you can withdraw from the program
at any time. Since many digital authors sell the lion’s share of their books
through Amazon, anyway, this is often a small sacrifice.
While you’re in the Select program:
Your ordinary customers can buy and download your books to their
Kindles, smartphones, tablets and other devices as usual.
Amazon customers who pay a monthly fee to be part of a special
library-style program called Amazon Prime, can borrow your book cost-free. You still
get paid – but out of a special monthly fund that Amazon sets aside for
that purpose. The author-compensation fund varies each month. In March,
2012, Amazon set aside $600,000, and each author earned $2.18 per borrowing
when the pie was divided. By the way, borrowings are counted by Amazon as
“sales.”
Most significantly, you gain the right to have a total of five days
in which customers can download your book for free. You can pick the days,
and in any combination.
It is this last benefit that has brought me
sales results that resemble the customer response I have gotten over the years from radio and TV interviews and press coverage.
For example, in the days leading up to the
100th anniversary of the sinking of The Titanic this month, I
offered a five-day free download to promote a title I released last year, Prophecies Surrounding the Titanic.
Within three weeks, the book was downloaded for free 546 times and this
resulted in 61 extra sales, a download-to-sales ratio of better than 10 per
cent. Although the promotion has long since ended, I am continuing to get
higher-than-normal sales.
Let me emphasize that I did virtually no
promotion of this giveaway – except for a posting on Facebook and less than a
half-dozen e-mails. It was simply an experiment. What if I had been systematic
and thorough?
Giving away books seems counter-intuitive to
writers, but you’re gaining massive exposure and building a fan base. Once
heavy readers realize your material is professional and interesting, the ice is
broken.
Keep in mind also that all these free
downloads – like the borrowings mentioned above -- count as customer demand when
Amazon’s software calculates your title’s all-important demand ranking. These downloads push you up in the Amazon ranking charts. You’re like a band rising
in Billboard’s charts and, as a result, having more radio stations play your
“hit.” Which exposure results in more sales. In other words, this is a “virtuous” cycle
upward – the pleasant opposite of a vicious cycle downward.
Only in Amazon’s case, as you move up in the
charts, the Amazon software may start displaying your book in “teaser mentions”
to readers who are searching for subject matter similar to that of your title.
Also, you could begin to have readers, bloggers and others review your book
online, continuing a promotional ripple effect. All this attention builds credibility for
hesitant prospects.
You may also enjoy a spillover effect, as
readers who discover you begin to look on Amazon for other books you’ve
written.
Authors can repeat the Kindle Select Program
for another 90 days after the initial period. This opens up the possibility of
another five days of free download promoting. Happily, there is no cut off.
My conclusion is that Kindle Direct Select
is ideal for professionally written, marketable books that are currently lost
needles in the haystack of hundreds of thousands of titles in the marketplace.
It’s an old axiom in publishing that the best book in the world will often die
on the vine without promotion. KDP Select has become the spotlight to throw on any
languishing book.
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