This week, we’ve been running a Kindle Select promotion for our science fiction novel, Exiles of Gaia. We decided to mix things up a bit and go with a different strategy than we’ve used in the past. This time, instead of the free promotion, we chose to use the Kindle Countdown Deal for Exiles. It is not going well.

As some of you know, when you enroll in Kindle Select Publishing, KDP, you are locked into an e-book contract for 90 days. What that means is that for that time period, you give Amazon exclusive publishing rights to the electronic version of your book (You can still do whatever you want with all other versions). In exchange for that right during that 90 day period, Amazon will promote your book in one of two ways. You can either choose a free book promotion or a Kindle countdown deal. You choose the dates and you choose the method. We’ve always done the free promotion, since we mainly want exposure. It has been very successful, with almost a 1,000 downloads of two of our novels and one short story. Not bad for new authors.

Now on to the Kindle Countdown deal…one would assume that if you were running a Kindle Countdown deal for five days and you searched “Kindle Countdown Deal,” on Amazon that your book would come up in the search results. That does not happen. No search results means no exposure means no new readers. We’ve had exactly one download in the last two days. We’ve learned our lesson and from now on, we’ll stick with the Kindle free promotions. You live and you learn.

As for what we’re working on this week, we’ve been producing new material on our three ongoing projects. Cold Prairie is in the hands of our beta-reader. We hope to get that back soon and once we publish, we’ll definitely be running a free promotion!

Hope you’ll continue to stick with us. It’s a bumpy ride! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day,
Anne, Nancy and Eric