[benji smith]

The first day of my two-day KDP select promo is drawing to a close, and it's been a huge success so far. Right this very moment, I've given away 16,805 books (with the downloads still coming hot and fast) and my book is sitting at #5 on the Kindle freebie list.

My goal for this promo was to give away 20,000 books, so I'm almost certainly going to blow waaaay past that goal. And my objective for this promo was primarily to build an audience, not necessarily to get an immediate sales boost.

So...

Now what?

When the promo ends tomorrow night, what should I do next? First and foremost, what about pricing? My book was originally priced at $7.99 but I dropped it over the past few months to $5.99 and then $2.99. My instinct is that $2.99 or $3.99 is the right post-promo price, but I'm tempted to go from free to 99 cents and then raise the price to $2.99 after a few days. I should reiterate at this point that I'm more interested in audience-building than profit-making. But this is my only book, so I can't really employ a funnel strategy at this point.

What do you think? What would you do?

 

[benji smith]

Thanks guys! Based on your feedback, I think I'll stick with $2.99.

But what do you think about extending a promo? How do you decide whether to keep the promo going for another day or to let it end and switch back to paid?

Presumably, I want to get as much benefit from the promo as possible without cutting it short. But ultimately, I want to transition from free downloads back into paid downloads, and I don't want to exhaust my current supply of potentially interested readers. Yesterday, at the height of the campaign, there were about 2000 downloads per hour. By late last night, the rate had slowed to 1000 downloads per hour and then of course trickled to nothing for the overnight. This morning, there were about 275 downloads between 8am and 9am (eastern) and then about the same between 9 and 10.

I'm going to keep looking at the hourly totals, which I assume will increase a bit over the course of the day and then start to decrease in the afternoon as the promo effect wears off, but I'm not sure how to decide whether a slowing promo should go on for another day to squeeze the last bits of juice from the freebie or whether any slowing at all is a signal to end the promo. Thoughts?

 

[benji smith]

I will *definitely* run the promo through the end of the day today. And I think you made a really good point about ranking #5...

I'll keep the promo going as long as I'm in the Kindle Top 100 free. When I drop below 100, I'll end it.