The Kindle Countdown Deal is available to books enrolled in KDP Select. It is a sale on your book that you can run on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. When your book is part of a countdown deal, potential buyers can see the regular price and the promotional price on the detail page along with a countdown clock.
You’ll receive your regular royalty rate for each sale during the promotion. Furthermore, your book will be listed on the Kindle Countdown Deal page.
To set up a Kindle Countdown Deal, select the Promote and Advertise button by your book in your KDP Bookshelf.
That will take you to a page entitled “Promote your book on Amazon.” On this page, make sure the Kindle Countdown Deal option is selected and click on the yellow Create a new Kindle Countdown Deal button.
On the following page called “Create a new Kindle Countdown Deal” first choose whether you wish to run your sale on Amazon or Amazon UK. Then choose what 7-day period you want to run the sale. You can choose to run the deal for fewer days, but you only get one countdown deal per each 90-day enrollment period, so you might as well use the maximum number of days.
Decide how many increments you want the sale price to have, from one to five. Then decide on the starting price of your book from .99 to $1 less than the full price.
When you continue, you will see the proposed promotional schedule including date, duration of that price point, price and the discount percentage. You can edit as you wish before confirming by selecting the yellow Add Promotion button at the bottom of the page.
In order to qualify for this sale, the digital price of your book can not have changed 30 days prior to the sale or 14 days after. The book must have been enrolled in KDP select for at least 30 days.
The book can’t have had a free promotion during the same KDP Select term. You can choose either one type of promotion or the other, not both. If your book is not exclusive to KDP Select and Amazon finds out about it, you lose your KDP privileges and any promotions are cancelled. You also can’t cancel the promotion once it has begun.
Make sure to advertise your Kindle Countdown Deal on all your social media accounts!
Assignment: Set up a Kindle Countdown Deal.
