Kindle Countdown | Observations so Far
I blogged that Kindle Countdown was going to provide new opportunities for authors. It would be fair to say that I had high expectations for this new feature offered by Amazon, which allows authors to run time limited price drop promotions. However, experiences so far have not been good.
For a start, I found it impossible to set up promotions for any of my books. Many were ineligible because the criteria for running a Countdown promotion are strict. However, I couldn't even set up a promotion for the one that was eligible. When I contacted Kindle technical support, their explanation did nothing to ease my confusion.
Lynda Wilcox, who recently ran an incredibly successful free promotion on her book Strictly Murder was frustrated with her promotion, which didn't show up anywhere on Amazon's Countdown Deals listing. So much for increased visibility.
Jennie Lee, author of What Happened to Polly found that her Countdown promotion never even began.
Clearly some authors have been able to set up promotions. There are now over 4,000 offers listed on the .com Countdown page and over 500 on .co.uk.
It seems to me that there are two problems:
1. Amazon's system for setting up deals is experiencing major teething problems.
2. Simply running a Countdown deal will not dramatically increase your visibility.
Perhaps a Countdown deal, should you be lucky enough to get one working, needs to be part of a larger marketing strategy, much like running a free promotion. With hundreds, and in some cases thousands of Countdown deals out there, readers probably won't notice your book on Amazon alone. You will need to tell people it's there, through social networking and bargain book listings.
How to advertise your Countdown Deal.
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