Recommended for new fiction authors (possibly). Kindle is about 60% of the ebook market, and when you’re agreeing to their 90-day exclusive distribution agreement, you’re leaving iTunes (30-40%-ish) and other ebook services out of the mix. Can be useful for improving a book’s ranking and sometimes increasing sales after the promotion is over. A LOT of people are using this service and it is showing less exciting results than in the past. (More info in video.)
Kindle Select
Kindle Select Free Days
Talked about this a bit in the previous video. Here’s a little more. Schedule free days around obvious “reading times.” Could be holidays or weekends, typically are times when people have a little free time to read. Then, use free and paid advertising services to promote your free days. (The promotion part of it will take a week or two ahead of time to coordinate.)
Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) – Select and Non-Select Ebooks
Ok – so, first off – this will work for BOTH Select and non-Select ebooks. This is exciting, because it means you don’t have to restrict your distribution to just Kindle if you want to run this particular program. The setup looks a lot like Facebook Ads or Google Adwords, with the added benefit of allowing you to target specific books. (I love this idea for fiction authors.) You can sign up quickly & easily (and without needing to be approved) directly through Kindle Direct, https://kdp.amazon.com/
Amazon Marketing Services – Results
So far, I’ve been running an AMS promotion based on keyword search, via the Sponsored Products option. First impressions: it has a very cheap CPC (cost per click) at .07/click. That would mean there are few people advertising with the same keywords I picked. (Virtually zero competition.) The # of times it’s being shown is pretty good, but click-through is minimal at 2 clicks and actual sales are zero so far. (Would this change with a more compelling cover/book title?) $5/day budget. (Metrics pic is attached so you can see what it looks like.)
I just set up a new campaign using the Product Display option. It will take a few days for them to review and approve it. For this one, I’m using a total budget of $100, average bid at .25, and roughly a 2-month promotion window, the cost spread out over the 2 months. They also give an option to spend all the money as quickly as possible, but I didn’t pick that this time. I’ll add results (if any) when I see something.
Impression of AMS thus far: I like how it’s relatively new, so not everyone is using it yet. (Reminds me of how well FB ads worked a few years ago, before everyone started doing it.) I like how CPC is CHEAP. I don’t like how it takes a few days to update the stats. That’s kind of a bummer. Seems like it could be updated more real-time, since everything is online. I think it’s worth testing, to see if it’s a good option in your genre. Post results if/when you have them.
UPDATE (2025): Not so cheap anymore! You might look at creating “A+ content” instead. This allows you to add more images to your product page. It’s also free.
