[Writer Writing]

Just wondering if anyone has any tips for getting on the first few pages of the featured countdowns in the US store? I seem to manage it in the UK store quite successfully but the US store evades me. Does anyone have any advice? It would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Philip Gibson]

Just wondering if anyone has any tips for getting on the first few pages of the featured countdowns in the US store? I seem to manage it in the UK store quite successfully but the US store evades me. Does anyone have any advice? It would be greatly appreciated.

Try expanding the number of sub-categories your book appears in.

The more sub-categories you have, the greater the chance of appearing highly placed in the Countdown lists for those particular sub-categories.

Philip

 

[SkyScribe]

I got on after kicking off a countdown deal with a few ads that got me into the mid triple digits area--it's not a secret which sites I've found to be the best--and I can attribute probably 100 sales and $100 in KENP pages read to being put on that list. My advice would be to plan to have your deal run at $0.99 the entire time and push as strongly and smartly as you can at the start. The payoff for getting on there isn't enough to justify blowing tons of money on ineffective ads.

 

[MySky]

I got on after kicking off a countdown deal with a few ads that got me into the mid triple digits area--it's not a secret which sites I've found to be the best--and I can attribute probably 100 sales and $100 in KENP pages read to being put on that list. My advice would be to plan to have your deal run at $0.99 the entire time and push as strongly and smartly as you can at the start. The payoff for getting on there isn't enough to justify blowing tons of money on ineffective ads.

SkyScribe - How is keeping the deal at $0.99 the entire time a countdown deal? What is the difference between that and just lowering your price to $0.99 for that period?

 

[Philip Gibson]

You can keep the price at $0.99 for the entire duration (7 days) of the Countdown deal. You can, if you like, manually make your price $0.99 for any amount of time you like. But if you do, your royalty will only be 35%. During a Countdown deal, your royalty will remain at 70% if that is the royalty you have chosen.

Philip

 

[MySky]

Thanks, Philip. I don't think the TOS for a countdown is clear about that, or maybe I just spaced out while reading the voluminous rules.

 

[PhoenixS]

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[Usedtoposthere]

I've been in the sliders and on the first page. BookBub, other stacked ads leading to it, and selling a LOT of books. Plus some extra help from KDP. The best is, though, if they put your book in a savings email. I'm not sure how many readers look at that Countdown page. I don't find it an easy thing to navigate to, and it's not something that's really pushed on Amazon as far as I can tell.

 

[Writer Writing]

Thanks so much for this, all great advice. I'm going to keep plugging away and hopefully I will start to see some results.

 

[Geoff Jones]

I think there are some interesting strategies to talk about here.

The conventional wisdom (as I understand it) says that you should build up your rank over the duration of the Countdown Deal, peaking with your best ad (BookBub if possible) on the last day.
This should lead to two results:
[list type=decimal]
[*]You are likely to maximize profits because your book will be back at full price on the day after its peak rank.
[*]Your rank is likely to decline more slowly as sales drop off, because it rose slowly. ('Zon Algorithm Voo-Doo)
[/list]

But this thread seems to suggest that you should front load your ads and try to peak early in your Countdown Deal.
With this strategy:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Your book has a better chance of getting featured on Amazon's Countdown Deal page or email.
[*]You may sell more copies total (at $0.99) because of the higher visibility/ better rank of the book in the second half of the Countdown Deal.
[/list]

If the goal is exposure rather than profit, the second strategy seems to make sense.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Counter-arguments? Counter-suggestions?

Geoff

 

[PhoenixS]

*************

 

[Salvador Mercer]

I posted on my KCD for my second book here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217724.0.html

I did a seven day KCD promo, used 4 days of promo sites and got 53 sales over the last three days of the promo with no real ads. My book was in the #3 or #4 spot out of around 300 titles for almost the entire time it was in the promotion period. I didn't make any special pages, but I was on the front page of my genre in the first few spots. That met my objective and did what I wanted to accomplish.

Not sure if this answers the OP's initial question, but a book has to be selling well (and as P.S. pointed out) and be somewhat popular to start in order to rank on the KCD page. I think getting 18, 16 and then 19 sales, all organic, on the last three days with no paid promos (1 small one) was worth it imho.

 

[Usedtoposthere]

How come Phoenix has to be so dang smart?

What I've always tried to do is, start a few days before the biggest ad (BookBub), and also have ads the day after BookBub, to try to smooth the spike as she says--both the ramp up and the ramp back down. For my upcoming promo, which is 5 days, I've got about 15 sites going, including BargainBooksy, ENT, BookSends/Pixel of Ink, Fussy Librarian, etc., happening around the BookBub promo. Also as Phoenix says, having some of those promos happening at the beginning helps your book move up and increases the chances that it'll be on that first Countdown Deals page (for whatever that's worth--as I said, not sure how many customers navigate to that). But also that it'll rank high in your categories for longer on the pop list as well as the bestseller list.

 

[Jane Killick]

Just to add that another advantage to the countdown deal as opposed to manually lowering the price is that Amazon shows it is selling at a discount with, I believe, a price slashed out in red.

If you manually lower your price to 0.99 it just shows that to be the price.