[Carol (was Dara)]

You know how people are always trying to go permafree via price-matching but Amazon won't pick up the price change? I envy them.  Expecting the process to take weeks or months, I made the book free in a couple stores via SmashWords, although I wasn't wanting to be permafree until book 3's release. Darn Amazon for their efficiency. They picked up my price drop earlier than expected. Rather than start the long process of unfreeing it, I guess I'm just going to work night and day to get book 3 out in the next couple weeks. Not sure how I feel about that. For anybody counting on Amazon to be slow at price-matching, beware. Sometimes they're not.

 

[Amanda Brice]

Ugh! Good luck. Write like the wind!!!!

(And I WISH they would be quick to price-match me. Book 3 is supposed to come out in a little less than a month from now.)

 

[smallblondehippy]

Oh dear! Trust Amazon not to play ball. Good luck with your writing marathon. I've just reported my book as free so I hope Amazon price matches as quickly as they did yours!

 

[nico]

Maybe this ought to go into a new thread, but is it against KDP terms to get a price-matched perma-free book?

Under Section 4 of the Terms and Conditions, it states:

"You must set your Digital Book's List Price (and change it from time-to-time if necessary) so that it is no higher than the list price in any sales channel for any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book."

This stopped me from setting the list price at $2.99 and getting my books priced matched down to 99c w/ 70% royalty, but shouldn't this also apply to free books? Has anyone inquired with Amazon about this or is this a don't ask, don't tell kind of thing?

 

[chrisanthropic]

Yeah, I was a little surprised to see Magic of Thieves free right after our paid promo - who knows, it could turn out well for you.

 

[TexasGirl]

It is against ToS to try to get a book with a price price-matched to lower. If your book is not free, you have to make Amazon be the lowest price. They get super testy if you try to price match in order to obtain 70% royalties on a book that is under $2.99 elsewhere. When they find it, you will get a love letter saying lowering it immediately or they will delete it.

But free is not something they have a problem with. In fact, they have a column to list price-matched freebies on the sales reports.

 

[Carol (was Dara)]

Yeah, I was a little surprised to see Magic of Thieves free right after our paid promo - who knows, it could turn out well for you.

Tell me about it. All that effort to raise my rankings during the promo and the very day after the promo ends I get set to free. Kinda messes up the plans and loses any earnings I might have gained. I'm also losing around $20 every day the book is free, since it was selling okay on its own. This'll learn me to try and be clever.

My first instinct was to try and get the paid price back but that'd probably take a couple weeks to go through SW. Plus the damage is already sort of done, so I might as well let it ride and concentrate on getting book 3 out asap.

Maybe this ought to go into a new thread, but is it against KDP terms to get a price-matched perma-free book?

What Deanna said. I'm not sure if Amazon actually means authors to do this or if it's just a loophole. Either way, I've never heard of anyone getting their wrist slapped over it. The worst that happens (IME) is they stop free-matching at their pleasure and return the book to it's regular price.

 

[Amanda Brice]

If you ask Amazon about price-matching to free, they'll point out that it's against the ToS. That being said, there's a column on the KDP Dashboard, so I don't think they're really making a point to crack down on it.

And my book went free tonight, yippee! 6 days after I reduced the price at Kobo (about 3 days after it went free at iTunes, and it isn't free yet at B&N).