Kindle Countdown | New Promotional Opportunities for Indies

Authors have been speculating about the new Kindle Countdown Deals tab in their Kindle Direct Publishing Reports. A press release now reveals that it's a new option that will allow authors to put their books on time limited promotions. To take advantage of setting up one of these promotions, you need to make your eBooks exclusive to Amazon (sound familiar?).

Kindle Countdown Deals provide readers with limited-time promotional discounts on eBooks. Readers will see a clock that counts down to the end of the deal, along side the book's usual price. The promotion can last from one hour to seven days.

An example of a book enrolled in Kindle Countdown

Self-published authors have always been able to drop our prices and put them up again, but not in a way that was recognised as a price drop by Amazon. For example, if I dropped a £1.99 book to 99p, it would show as a 99p book with no indication that it was a more expensive book on promotion. It was up to external sites like Bookbub to keep track of temporary price drop offers.

Amazon has now set up a .com page listing Countdown Deals, but there doesn't appear to be a UK equivalent yet (although there are Countdown deals taking play over here). At the moment you can sort the Countdown offers by 'new and popular' and the usual 'low to high' etc. I'd like to see an 'ending soon' section like Goodreads giveaways.

For almost two years, authors that enrolled in Amazon's KDP Select programme could discount their book to free for five days every 90 days, the days didn't have to be consecutive. Now authors can choose between five free days and a Countdown offer.

However, countdown is only available for books priced between £1.93 and £14.99 (UK) and $2.99 and $24.99 (US). You can set up separate promotions for each marketplace (only UK and US seem available so far). Other restrictions include the fact that a book must have been enrolled in Select for at least 30 days preceding the Countdown deal, have not been subjected to a price drop during that period and the offer must see the book reduced by at least $1 (presumably £1 in the UK).

An example of the screen for creating a Kindle Coundown deal.

So far there are 69 countdown deals available include books by Stephanie Bond, Debora Geary and J.A. Konrath, Laurie Fabiano and Christopher Smith.

What does this mean for authors and the eBook world?

Paula Jane, author of Hairy, Scary Spider? and other children's books, said, "I like the fact we still get 70% royalties of our books."

For the first time, authors will be able to earn 70% royalties on books where the price is below £1.49 (UK) or $2.99 (US). In the past, you had to drop down to 30% royalties when you ran such a promotion.

Scott Marlowe, author of the A Tale of the Assassin Without a Name series remarked, "This could be big."

When Amazon first brought out Select, the benefits for authors who enrolled were enormous, particularly those who joined early, before the market became swamped. The increased visibility when running a free promotion was an exceptionally effective marketing tool. This could be the case again. With less than 100 Countdown deals so far, and an anticipated buzz around the phenomenon, authors who get in quickly may very well see great results.

The alternative to free promotions will hopefully see a rise in the value of eBooks. With five day freebies being the only big promotional feature, authors felt compelled to use their free days to get noticed. As a consequence, the value of eBooks dropped considerably, with many readers picking up the majority of their reads while they were free, and authors having to considerably lower the prices of their paid books, to compete with free books. Countdown deals will allow authors to create special offers that, due to the strict rules are special, without dropping their prices down to zero.

Promotions will generally last longer. You could use your five free days in five separate chunks if you wanted to, but it appears that you only get one Countdown offers per 90 days, no matter how long it is.

Unfortunately, the exclusivity criteria is likely to considerably weaken the position of other eBook stores. The introduction of Select saw authors leave websites like Smashwords en masse, as they scrambled to become eligible for the rewards Amazon exclusivity was offering. Over the months, the benefits of free promotions have decreased due to market flooding and Amazon tweaking their algorithms. Many authors were taking their books out of Select and selling them through Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple (not that Kobo treated us well). This new move is likely to draw authors back to Amazon, giving them an even stronger share of the market.

The Amazon monopoly is bad for the eBook industry in general, because many indie authors' entire careers are at the companys mercy. However, until other eBook vendors start delivering the result that Amazon gets us, time after time, it's hard for authors to resist the rewards that come with exclusivity.

It doesn't appear that traditionally published authors will be able to set up Countdown deals, unless they're with one of Amazon's own imprints. Earlier this week, David Graham, author of small press series The Silent Blade Chronicles, expressed his frustration at the free book epidemic, stating that 'it would be much better if everyone's books were sold and promoted on a level footing'. This new scheme, which will only benefit self-published authors in the Select programme and authors who publish with Amazon publishing, is likely to boost sales for authors who publish through less-traditional methods. However, main stream books already seemed to have the opportunity to run price-drop promotions that Amazon recognises as such, so Countdown will bring indies in line with trads, rather than giving us an unfair advantage.

In summary, this looks like a positive development for indie authors. We already run time limited price-drop promotions and it will be great to have a proper mechanism for doing so. In general, it will increase the value of eBooks, which will be a welcome change for the indie community. However, I do worry about Amazon becoming an even more dominant power.

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