#277: KDP Select Free Promotions

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 Marketing Minute episode. My name is Shelly Hitz.

And I'm CJ Hitz.

And we're your mentors and author coaches inside Christian Book Academy. And today we are going to talk about KDP select free promotions. And so this has been something that we personally have been doing since 2012. I mean, almost since it began. I think it launched, um, KDP Kindle Direct Publishing is where we publish most of our print and ebooks, you know, and Kindle ebooks. But they started a program called KDP select and allowed you to do free promotions. And that started in December of 2011. Well, we did our first one in January of 2012. And back in the day, this really was an amazing way to get your book boosted in the search engines in Amazon, to get more sales afterwards, to get higher on the book lists and all of those types of things. Now, the benefits are not quite as great as they used to be, but we still recommend it. Now, why would you give your book away from for free? You know, you have worked probably months on this book. You spent spent money to get it, you know, professionally edited and formatted. And, you know, you've invested so much into this book. Why would you ever consider giving it away free? Well, there's a few reasons. And when you're a new author, this can give you exposure to new readers. And so, you know, that's one option. It's like a marketing reason, you know, it's like free, free marketing. And yet you need to have some sort of call to action or other books they can buy. So what we like to do is include a call to action to join our email list in the beginning of the book and the end of the book, and sprinkle it throughout wherever it feels appropriate. And that way you can start building your email list of readers who enjoy your book. Now, another option and another mindset of why give your book away for free is we consider it a ministry. And we've literally given over half a million ebooks away for free on Kindle alone. And we still do it on almost a monthly basis. Right, cj?

Yeah. I mean, that's the beauty of KDP Promotions is that you can pick a book that's in there. Part of that program and you can schedule it. And it's just fantastic because that can go out on a free books list that you've created or all of your newsletter subscribers that are excited about getting free content. Maybe you've got some readers from around the world that they're just in a financial spot where they can't afford to buy your books, your print books, your ebooks at full price. But when you do a promotion, it's just a huge ministry to those that don't have the means to buy otherwise.

Yeah. So just a reminder, the KDP select program is an optional program you can join when you publish an ebook through kdp.Amazon.com youm don't have to enroll in KDP select and you can publish a Kindle book without having to be in the program. So that sometimes has confused people. But if you enroll in KDP select, then you're giving Amazon exclusive rights to your ebook. Your print book can still be on other platforms, your audiobook, different translations, but in digital format. So even PDF and other formats, you give KDP exclusive rights for 90 days. And so that's what we're talking about here. And you know, for books that are part of a series, you know, it can be really beneficial to keep the first book in the KDP select program and run free promotions occasionally to gain exposure and interest in the rest of the books of your series. So, you know, when somebody says, sees your book, it's not a risk at all. They can try you out as an author. If they love your books, then they'll continue to buy your next book and your next book and your next book in the series. So what we encourage you to do is if you do have a series, to publish an excerpt of the next book in that series in the back of the first book. Right. So you're sharing with them what that's going to be. And if that book isn't published yet and you publish it later, guess what? As an independently published author, you can always go back and edit your book previously to add in that excerpt there. So you're leading people in what is the next step with you. And so many authors find this a very effective way to promote the next book in their series, because guess what, it's free. Of course, we, we encourage you to explore Amazon ads and other ways to get your book in front of readers that are also, they cost. But this is a free way to try. And you know, like I said, I recommend having that call to action inside your book either way so that you can get people to join your email list and connect with you. That's one of the things that CJ and I have done for a long time and we've grown email lists with thousands and thousands of readers because of that. But you know what, you can also use your free days to get verified reviews from your reviewers. So what does this mean? Well, you can send somebody a PDF copy of your book or a digital copy, they read it and then they post a review on Amazon. As long as they've purchased, what is it, like $50 or something from Amazon that year, they, they can post a review. They, they, they don't need to have purchased the book on Amazon in order to publish the review. However, let's say you send your PDF copy, your advanced review copy to your reviewers and then you say on this specific day or these three days, you know, you may it to two or three days I'm going to put my book for free. And at that time I want you to download my book and post your review at that time. So you give them an advance option. You know, they're reading your book in advance through the PDF or through another version, but then on that free day they go to Kindle, they download the Kindle book and then they post the review. Now when they do that, there will be a little text added to the review that says verified review. And some people do look for that. Now, C.J. and I don't really worry about that too much. We just want to see the social proof is coming to our book. And we allow them. Once we get the first 10 to 20, 30 reviews, then we allow them to come organically. But this is something that if you want to be strategic about your reviews, you can do this with the KDP select program. And it's kind of a quiet launch. You're not telling everybody that your book is free that day. You just want it to be free so your reviewers can download it and post those verified reviews.

Yeah, and so another option that we, we've already alluded to a couple times is to use the KDP select program to launch your new books, then remove them after your 90 day contract. And this allows you to publish them to other ebook platforms such as Draft 2 Digital is one option that you can use to do this. But it's good to note that you know, you have to go in and choose to remove your book from the KDP select program or else it's going to automatically renew. So you can do this by logging into kdp.Amazon.com and click the link for the Bookshelf and then clicking info on the right side under the column for KDP select. There you can choose to remove the check mark that automatically re enrolls your book in KDP Select. So a couple steps to consider there. And again, we've seen huge results.

In being able to be a part of that program and be able to get that book to as many people as possible.

Yeah. And so this is a hybrid option and you can launch your book in the KDP select program. Take advantage of the five free days they give you out of 90. So you get five free days. So maybe in 90 days you could even run two different free promotions. Maybe you do a day or two for your reviewers and then you do a few days for everyone. And you know, that way it already has reviews on there. And I do recommend before doing your free days, try to get at least 2 to 3 reviews. I recommend 10, but at least get a couple. I wouldn't recommend doing it until you have six. Some social proof on there. I, I wouldn't do it with zero reviews.

We like to joke that, you know, the book is sort of naked without the reviews. The reviews sort of add some clothing, so to speak.

Yeah, it's like a ghost town. It's like, oh my gosh, no, nobody's been here. Nobody's been reading this book, nobody. And people don't want to go first, they want to go second. Right. They want to see someone else has already got, you know, gone first. They've already read the book, they enjoyed it. So maybe you use the first one or two days of your 90 to get those verified reviews. Then you use the rest of them for a big promotion. And we have a link for this training that goes to a blog post that gives you some places you can submit your book ways that you can get it out to even more people that are looking for free books. And then you get all of this benefit from, from those first 90 days. Then you unenroll, you're like, give me back my rights, kdp.

I'm not exclusively dating you anymore. And once your contract is over, you know, you've unchecked, you have to go in and manually do this. You have to go in and manually remove your book from kdp. Once your contract is over, then you can start publishing on all the other platforms and go wide instead of just using Amazon. So it's a great option especially to get your book going, to get some, you know, use of this, this option. But we do want to mention that results will vary. You know, one of the Most powerful, you know, aspects in the past was that Amazon would advertise your book for free afterwards, you know, for each person that downloaded your book, you know, then Amazon figures out, you know, how many that would be, and it kind of gives you a boost in the rankings. That boost does not seem to be very huge anymore. And so that in and of itself isn't the main reason to do a free promotion. Like I said, you know, it's to get some exposure, to get known to new people to sell books in the series. You know, the, you know, other books in the series as a ministry. But there may be some benefits from Amazon where it says customers who bought this book also bought this book. And I've noticed before that some of the books of our members in Christian Book Academy show up on our book pages because, you know, we have, you know, we have supported each other and it's, it's not a review, you know, it's not a review swap or anything like that. It's just that when books come out, people want to buy and support those books of our other members. And so that's kind of cool how that ends up working out in the end. But things change at Amazon all the time. And so I encourage you to do your research and decide what's best for your books. But like I said, if you want to get more information about KDP free promotions and get our checklist of places that you can submit your book, make sure to check out our blog and that link will be in the training. So, cj, why don't you close us in prayer?

Yeah. So, Father, again we, we thank you so much for each and every person listening, watching, and we ask that you would give them wisdom regarding how to best market their books, how to best get their books in front of people. But we also pray, Lord, for that, that element of what only you can do.

Yes.

We believe wholeheartedly that our books can get into the right hands at the right time because you orchestrated behind the scenes to allow that to happen. We've seen it in our own books and heard stories of others as well. And so I pray that.

Not only would people be given wisdom and how to best market their books, but we pray, Lord, for divine.

God moments that happen in the lives of these authors that endeavor to glorify your name with their writing. And we thank you for all of the stories that are going to come about, all the fruit that's going to be borne out as a result of how you use this in our writing. So we ask all these things In Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. So we encourage you if you're wanting to have a community that helps, you know, support you. And if you want the training to help, you know, help you reach more readers with your message, join us inside ChristianBookAcademy.com this is a paid online membership where we help you reach more readers who with the message of your book. And one of the ways that we do this is something brand new that we just launched. It's called mini Marketing Messages Kits. And these kits, every month you'll get a new kit. It has different prompts and templates, different emails, and they're all things that can be easily customized for you, that you can basically just you make a copy of the Google Document or you download the PDF, but if you use the Google document, you can just make a few changes where we tell you to make changes, copy, paste it, use it in your marketing to engage your readers to sell more books, to be able to at least connect with your email audience on a monthly basis. And you know, we are giving this to you.

As an included part now of Christian Book Academy. So it just got better and we're not charging anymore. So make sure to go check us out. ChristianBookAcademy.com we have lots of resources, training and now these templates for you to use. You'll get new fresh templates every month so you can market your book with confidence, but also reach your readers in a way that feels good for you. So we will see you on the inside and thank you for being here.

God bless you guys.

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.