Sales Bump from KDP Kindle Giveaway -- WEEK 1

The grand experiment continues.  How does a self published writer break through to a national audience, to the Million Kindle Club, to the NY Times best seller list?  A growing number of indy writers have done it.  There is no one secret way that worked for all of them.  It is a combination often of luck, talent and marketing mojo.  Some have broken through by advertising on big sites like Kindle Nation, some have struck gold using the KDP Free Book Giveaway, some are brilliant at networking on countless blogs, some have been blessed by the all-powerful Amazon goddess who gives them special placement on the Amazon site.

Today I'm going to share a little success I've experienced using the KDP Free Book Giveaway.  KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing and it's the way we set pricing etc for our kindle books.  Initially I priced the kindle of my novel PROSPECT OF MY ARRIVAL at $6.95.  Sales were decent but not great.  I sold maybe 5 books a month, netting me about $25 in royalties.  Then I agreed to be part of the Kindle Lending Library on Amazon.  This allowed me as author to give away my kindle book for free for up to five days.

THE RESULTS WERE INTERESTING.  On the first day, over 400 individuals downloaded a free copy of my novel.  (Even when I had priced my kindle at 99 cents, I got nowhere near this kind of response.)  By the end of the Five Day Giveaway -- over 2000 readers downloaded a free copy of PROSPECT!

What I learned from networking with others doing the KDP Giveaway was that many got a substantial sales bump AFTER the free giveaway, even when they started charging again for their book.  A couple mid list writers with about ten novels under their belt -- continued to sell about 1,000 copies of their kindle a day, netting royalties of about $300.  If they continued throughout the year, they'd earn $90,000 in a year!  But these are semi-established writers with a back list.  Whereas I'm a debut novelist with no back list.  Working on finishing my follow up novel THE HOPE STORE.

The results from my first week post-free-giveaway are not nearly as jaw-dropping as some of my peers, but they represent a significant uptick to my ebook sales.  Prior to the giveaway, I was selling about 3 kindle books a month at 99 cents, netting me about $1.  My giveaway ending December 31, 2011.  From January 1 - 7, I sold 45 kindles of PROSPECT.  This netted me $46.  That's a 4600% increase over previous sales.  If I continue to sell as well or better, I could earn $2,300 a year on kindle book sales alone.


I did an little experiment within my experiment that week.  For the first three days, I priced the kindle at $2.99 and sold 24 books netting me $34.51.  For the last three days, I priced the kindle at 99 cents and sold 21 books netting me $11.55.  So I've decided since the price point seemed to yield the sale number of sales -- I would keep my kindle price point at $2.99 and see if the sales continued to be steady.

In the meantime, my paperback sales for PROSPECT have been okay but kind of flat.  In November, I sold 26 books with a royalty  of $109.  In December I sold 20 books with a royalty of $75.  Didn't get much bump in paperback sales from the kindle giveaway.  So I am going to try lowering my paperback price.  I was selling it for $14.95, but Amazon discounted the book of $10.50 for the first first months.  Now I'm going to try selling the paperback for $10.75 as this is the lowest I'm allowed to go (maybe Amazon will discount it further).  The kindle will be priced at $2.99.  Hopefully this might help my paperback sales.

I got some good visibility in the January 2012 PW Select issue.  Though the book review of PROSPECT was lukewarm, my book cover appeared THREE TIMES in the issue!  Including on the issue cover.  My next big marketing experiment:  from February 3-5, I'm doing some paid advertising on Kindle Nation through an option called Facebook Triple Play.  This has been very successful for many writers.  I'll let you know the results of that.

Question:  I know many of you who reading my blog are also self pubbed writers.  Have you tried the KDP Giveaway?  Have you gotten a sales bump?  What other marketing approaches are working for you?