#250: A Simple Any Time Book Promotion (Marketing Minute)

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Welcome to this week's Marketing minute. My name is Shelly Hitz and I'm here today with my husband, cj.

Hey guys.

And today I'm going to talk to you about a simple anytime book promotion. And then at the end, CJ will say a prayer for you. So I just think that sometimes we can over complicate things as authors, right? I've been an author coach for a long time and I work closely with many Christian writers and I just see this happening over and over. You know, yes, you can plan for months for your book launch with a book launch team, podcast, interview, tour and the works. But you know what? You don't always need to go big. Sometimes I like to keep things simple and easy with a 99 cent promotion for a Kindle ebook. You can plan a 99 cent promotion anytime. You know, CJ, you don't need to have a book launch to lower your book to 99 cents. Right?

Right.

And yet, you know, I had some, some women in a coaching program recently. My, my new program, Book Marketing Momentum. And they were, there was like two or three of them telling me that they all had this mental block. They thought you had to do a book launch and then you had to be enrolled in KDP select in order to host a 99 cent promotion. But that's not true. The great thing is you can have a 99 cent promotion for your book at any time to boost sales. It doesn't have to be a book launch, it doesn't have to be a holiday. You decide when you want to do it and then lower the price of your Kindle ebook for a few days. And you don't even need to be in KDP Select. But you know, KDP select is a special program that allows you to run a countdown deal or a free promotion for five days every 90 days. So if you do have, if you are in that program, then you have to sell your ebook exclusively with Amazon to use this feature. And if you are enrolled in KDP select, then if you're doing a 99 cent promotion, go ahead and use the countdown deal option. You know, it just adds another layer of promotion for you. But if you're not enrolled in KDP select, you can still lower your ebook to $0.99 at any time for a two to three day promotion. It's so simple and it's a great way to get a boost of sales, reviews and so forth. This is the easiest promotion you can do. All you have to do is lower your price for a few days and then let people know about it. You don't have to create a special bonus. You don't have to coordinate a book launch team. You don't have to host a giveaway or contest. However, it will be easiest when you've done what we recommend and independently published your book because then you'll have access to your KDP account. Now if you have a publisher you'll have to coordinate the price drop with them. So there is a software that I recommend that you can use if you're going to do a 99 cent book promotion and it's called KDROI and they will automatically submit your book to multiple sites for consideration to be featured during your promotion. Now there is not a guarantee that you will be featured on these sites, but this tool gives you an easy way to submit your book to multiple sites at once. So you can check out the tool and this is my affiliate link. If you purchase through this link then I'll get a small commission. The link is trainingauthors.com.

KDROI and CJ and I use this tool all the time. So you know you can use it for a free promotion or a 99 cent promotion and it's just a helpful thing to use. So as we finish, I want to give you four action steps. First of all, number one, decide on a date for your promotion. I like to run my 99 cent promotions usually for three to five days. Maybe a Tuesday through a Thursday or Tuesday through a Saturday. But see what days work best for your audience. Action step number two submit your book to sites that promote bargain books at 99 cents. Use the Kdroi software to speed up the process. Again, that link is trainingauthors.comkdroi and then number three, schedule social media posts, blog posts and emails to your list about your promotion. And an optional step number four is to use other paid ads spread out over the three to five days to help boost your sales even more. If you want specific recommendations on which paid sites to use, I have created a training for you all about other paid ads inside Christian Book Academy so you can get instant access to that lesson right now@christianbookacademy.com so have you hosted a 99 cent promotion for a Kindle ebook before Will you plan to do another one in the future? Let us know what you plan to do. And cj, why don't you go ahead and pray for all of our listeners and that. That God would just bless any promotions that they do.

Yeah, Father, we thank you so much again for each and every listener. And I pray that you just continue to give them insight and wisdom on their writing projects. And I pray that you would pour out your blessing upon their promotions. Lord, we know firsthand that, you know, we can do all kinds of things, we can implement all kinds of tricks and apply things, but we, we call upon you, the God of the universe, to add blessing upon any of these promotions we're doing. We just pray that our books would get into the right hands at the right time, that each of our listeners would just look back and say, wow, I can see God's fingerprints all over that promotion. So would you give us that clarity and insight and lead us to the right avenues to promote our books and we'll give you the glory and the honor. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. We appreciate you. We are in this with you. And if you enjoy these marketing minute trainings, just take a moment to leave us a review. It makes our day when we see your reviews and we will see you next time.

Bye. Bye.

Bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.