New handling of Bargain Books and Free Books promoted on KindleBoards

3733 Views 47 Replies 19 Participants Last post by wxwalsh, Feb 26, 2013

KBoards Admin

Discussion Starter · Feb 22, 2013

As many of you have noticed, Amazon is changing its rules to limit the ratio of free e-books to paid e-books being sold by its affiliate sites.

This is going to change things for a lot of e-book sites out there, especially the ones that heavily cater to free book offerings.

Fortunately, KindleBoards has always had a good mix of paid book promotions and free book promotions. Links to those are at the bottom of every forum page. Specifically:

- Our paid book promotions include Spotlight posts, Bargain Book posts, banner ads, Featured Book ads, and Book Discovery promotions.
- Our sole free book promotion is the daily Free and Bargain Kindle Books blog post.

That being said, our free book links get a lot of download activity, and we want to be sure we stay within Amazon's free book guidelines. So, we're going to make the following changes, effective March 1st:

1. Instead of running our Free and Bargain Books post every day, we will run a Free Books post on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

2. We will introduce a Bargain Books post that will run on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. That post will contain only paid books. (During March, an occasional free book or two may be worked into it.)

What does this mean for you as authors?

- It means more value and attention for your bargain books. (A bargain book is any book that is either $0.99 or has been reduced from its normal price.) Your bargain book post will not be contained within a post of freebies; it will stand alongside other bargain books.

- It may mean there are fewer sites for you to choose from in promoting your books. I've been in contact today with others in the e-book world, and I expect several sites will be shut down, or overhauled, in the coming weeks.

- I think the trend is going to continue to move away from free books and more toward paid books. I would suggest collecting a list of sites that offer cost-effective promotions for paid books.

While this is a major change, Amazon remains the best affiliate program out there and we are ready to change right along with it as the e-book publishing phenomenon continues to evolve. Our goal continues to be to offer the best services we can to Kindle readers and Kindle authors.

I invite your feedback and ideas.

-Harvey

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1 - 20 of 48 Posts

crebel

· #2 · Feb 22, 2013

What about all the free book threads in the Bazaar? We have the stickied free book thread not for self-promotion, the Daily Links to Free Books thread for self-promotion, and there were approximately 40 individual free book threads just yesterday and today.

KBoards Admin

Discussion Starter · #3 · Feb 22, 2013

crebel said:
What about all the free book threads in the Bazaar? We have the stickied free book thread not for self-promotion, the Daily Links to Free Books thread for self-promotion, and there were approximately 40 individual free book threads just yesterday and today.

I'm not too worried about those; compared with the overall volume of our posts, they're not significant, and the traffic they drive to Amazon is much less than the traffic driven from our blog/Facebook posts.

Still, it's a good point and something I'll be watching during March. More adjustments may be necessary.

We are blessed to live in interesting times.

Lisa Grace

· #4 · Feb 22, 2013

Harvey said:
I'm not too worried about those; compared with the overall volume of our posts, they're not significant, and the traffic they drive to Amazon is much less than the traffic driven from our blog/Facebook posts.

Still, it's a good point and something I'll be watching during March. More adjustments may be necessary.

We are blessed to live in interesting times.

And I just want to point out, some of us have free books linked in our siggy's. Do you see that as being a problem?

KBoards Admin

Discussion Starter · #5 · Feb 22, 2013

LisaGraceBooks said:
And I just want to point out, some of us have free books linked in our siggy's. Do you see that as being a problem?

No, I don't see that as a problem and you should continue to do so. Thank you for thinking of that.

I'm pretty confident that I can throttle this by constraining our freebie posts in the blog. I want you authors and readers to be able to freely discuss and have sigs about your books. Well, subject to our forum guidelines, of course.

BBGriffith

· #6 · Feb 22, 2013

Harvey said:
- I think the trend is going to continue to move away from free books and more toward paid books. I would suggest collecting a list of sites that offer cost-effective promotions for paid books.

Definitely agree. Amazon no longer wants free books. They opened the floodgates with KDP Select and now have to start to close it bit by bit, first by establishing the 10:1 ratio of translatable downloads to equivalent sales (and it may be higher now), and now by "strongly urging" promote sites to stop posting freebies.

Zelah Meyer

· #7 · Feb 22, 2013

When I saw the thread about the changes, I was worried about whether this would hit you guys. I'm glad to hear that you think you'll be able to work around it. I don't currently have any free books - but if and when I do, I'll be happy to work around whatever guidelines will help keep the boards up and running!

Thank you for keeping us posted. I hope the work around does the trick.

Nathan Elliott

· #8 · Feb 22, 2013

Harvey,

You might also consider selectively removing the KB affiliate tag from certain links. If you were to run a Free Books post every day, you could possibly just not attach the affiliate tag to it on some (or even any) days if you are getting close to the 80% point. By selectively attaching the tag to Bargain Books links and other areas of the site that were less likely to contain freebies, you might be able to control the percentage safely without lowering your volume more than necessary.

For books in sigs, you could let the author flag it as free/paid so that you can generate the link with(out) the tag as appropriate.

Lisa Grace

· #9 · Feb 22, 2013

BBGriffith said:
Definitely agree. Amazon no longer wants free books. They opened the floodgates with KDP Select and now have to start to close it bit by bit, first by establishing the 10:1 ratio of translatable downloads to equivalent sales (and it may be higher now), and now by "strongly urging" promote sites to stop posting freebies.

I'm kind of wondering if they are doing some other tinkering, because my rate of purchase ratio to free varies between 1 - 9, to 1 - 10. I also noticed that my downloads seem very steady...

KBoards Admin

Discussion Starter · #10 · Feb 22, 2013

Thank you for the supportive comments and good suggestions. Depending on how our results go in March, we may have to either limit further the free book posts, or - as Nathan suggested - remove our affiliate tag from those links.

I'm glad Amazon is going to give us daily monitoring of this, so we can adjust as we go during the month of March (and beyond!).

DRMarvello

· #11 · Feb 22, 2013

Nathan Elliott said:
Harvey,

You might also consider selectively removing the KB affiliate tag from certain links. If you were to run a Free Books post every day, you could possibly just not attach the affiliate tag to it on some (or even any) days if you are getting close to the 80% point. By selectively attaching the tag to Bargain Books links and other areas of the site that were less likely to contain freebies, you might be able to control the percentage safely without lowering your volume more than necessary.

For books in sigs, you could let the author flag it as free/paid so that you can generate the link with(out) the tag as appropriate.

Harvey probably already knows this, but leaving the tag off specific links is not an effective approach. The tag is saved in a 24-hour browser cookie as soon as you navigate to Amazon. If all the visitor ever did was click on free book links, your strategy would work okay, but the first time the visitor clicks on any paid book, the affiliate cookie is set and all subsequent clicks over to Amazon will automatically get the tag (for up to 24 hours).

Nathan Elliott

· #12 · Feb 22, 2013

DRMarvello said:
Harvey probably already knows this, but leaving the tag off specific links is not an effective approach. The tag is saved in a 24-hour browser cookie as soon as you navigate to Amazon. If all the visitor ever did was click on free book links, your strategy would work okay, but the first time the visitor clicks on any paid book, the affiliate cookie is set and all subsequent clicks over to Amazon will automatically get the tag (for up to 24 hours).

This is true. It almost boils down to what percentage of free vs paid books a site's members and their families buy. Those who do regularly buy will be more likely to follow bargain books posts, so Harvey does have some control with that one to skew which subset of KB users get to Amazon via his links. But if they also grab 4 freebies on the same day, then there is still trouble. I guess it requires experimentation. Or, remove the links at 19,000 downloads each month and then put them back on the first of the month.

Ann in Arlington

· #13 · Feb 22, 2013

DRMarvello said:
Harvey probably already knows this, but leaving the tag off specific links is not an effective approach. The tag is saved in a 24-hour browser cookie as soon as you navigate to Amazon. If all the visitor ever did was click on free book links, your strategy would work okay, but the first time the visitor clicks on any paid book, the affiliate cookie is set and all subsequent clicks over to Amazon will automatically get the tag (for up to 24 hours).

Still. . . it makes it just a bit more likely that purchases are more often actual purchases rather than free downloads. I think it's definitely something to consider.

Question: I go to lots of different places; no doubt their tags are on some of my browsing sessions so which one rules? Say I go to Amazon from KB -- the KB tag is active for 24 hours. But within that 24 hours, I also go to Amazon at least once from EbookLovers, BookBub, and TheWeek. Which affiliate tag is active for a purchase I make during the 24 hours? Is it just the last one I did? If I clear my cache or cookies or something between sessions does that make a difference?

KBoards Admin

Discussion Starter · #14 · Feb 22, 2013

Ann in Arlington said:
Still. . . it makes it just a bit more likely that purchases are more often actual purchases rather than free downloads. I think it's definitely something to consider.

Question: I go to lots of different places; no doubt their tags are on some of my browsing sessions so which one rules? Say I go to Amazon from KB -- the KB tag is active for 24 hours. But within that 24 hours, I also go to Amazon at least once from EbookLovers, BookBub, and TheWeek. Which affiliate tag is active for a purchase I make during the 24 hours? Is it just the last one I did? If I clear my cache or cookies or something between sessions does that make a difference?

It's the last affiliate tag that was used to get to Amazon. The affiliate tag lasts for 24 hours or until the user accesses Amazon with another affiliate tag.

Ann in Arlington

· #15 · Feb 22, 2013

That makes sense. . . so then the plan is: if I'm going to go get free stuff, I link through some other site, and if I'm going to spend money, I come back here first.

Amanda Brice

· #16 · Feb 22, 2013

Harvey said:
It's the last affiliate tag that was used to get to Amazon. The affiliate tag lasts for 24 hours or until the user accesses Amazon with another affiliate tag.

This. 24 hours or until you click on a new affiliate link.

DRMarvello

· #17 · Feb 22, 2013

Ann in Arlington said:
Still. . . it makes it just a bit more likely that purchases are more often actual purchases rather than free downloads. I think it's definitely something to consider.

Question: I go to lots of different places; no doubt their tags are on some of my browsing sessions so which one rules? Say I go to Amazon from KB -- the KB tag is active for 24 hours. But within that 24 hours, I also go to Amazon at least once from EbookLovers, BookBub, and TheWeek. Which affiliate tag is active for a purchase I make during the 24 hours? Is it just the last one I did? If I clear my cache or cookies or something between sessions does that make a difference?

Like Harvey said, it's usually "the last affiliate wins." There's only one cookie, and it gets reset every time an affiliate ID is passed on the URL. The 24-hour clock restarts every time as well.

Yes, you can delete the affiliate cookie so the affiliate won't get credited for the sale, with one caveat: if you visit Amazon through an affiliate and put something into your cart, the item is tagged with that affiliate id and stays that way for up to 90 days. I'm not sure what happens if, within the course of 90 days, you add multiple things to your cart from different affiliates and then check out. I'm not sure if the affiliate identifier is held at the order level or the item level.

A.A

· #18 · Feb 23, 2013

Harvey said:
- I think the trend is going to continue to move away from free books and more toward paid books. I would suggest collecting a list of sites that offer cost-effective promotions for paid books.

While this is a major change, Amazon remains the best affiliate program out there and we are ready to change right along with it as the e-book publishing phenomenon continues to evolve. Our goal continues to be to offer the best services we can to Kindle readers and Kindle authors.

I invite your feedback and ideas.

-Harvey

I liked that Amazon was bringing in that change when I read about it on ENT. I think it's a positive step. Personally, I'm not planning on doing any more free promos.
Thanks for your bargain book promo for Dollhouse today, Harvey

KBoards Admin

Discussion Starter · #19 · Feb 23, 2013

Anya said:
I liked that Amazon was bringing in that change when I read about it on ENT. I think it's a positive step. Personally, I'm not planning on doing any more free promos.
Thanks for your bargain book promo for Dollhouse today, Harvey

You are welcome! I hope it's a great day for your book.

Gertie Kindle

· #20 · Feb 23, 2013

Without productive free runs, there is very little incentive to stay in Select. It would be nice if Amazon had something up their sleeve to make Select worth staying in.

I've got a free run coming up on 2/28-3/1 so I guess I got in under the wire.

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